


With a Candle to Guide Me

by daftfear



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daftfear/pseuds/daftfear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Author: Anonymous<br/>Title: With A Candle To Guide Me<br/>Songspiration: Monster - Imagine Dragons<br/>Prompter: leontinabowie<br/>Prompt Number: 80<br/>Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, brief allusions to Hermione/Ron, Remus/Tonks, Bill/Fleur, past Harry/Ginny<br/>Summary: Draco wakes up in a nightmare, caught in the horror that’s haunted him since childhood. Desperate and trying to make sense of all that’s happened, Draco finds the only person who seems to want to give him answers is Potter. But being near Potter holds questions too—ones Draco isn’t sure he wants to ask. Even if it means turning down a way back to solid ground.<br/>Rating: NC-17<br/>Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.<br/>Warning(s): Angst, creature!fic, explicit sex, coarse language, mentions of self-harm<br/>Epilogue compliant? No<br/>Word Count: 29,300</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Candle to Guide Me

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: This prompt, inspired by the song ‘Monster’ by Imagine Dragons, was fantastic. I had such a clear idea of what I wanted to write when I saw it, and then I began writing and all my ideas promptly went out the window. I don’t know if this is what you were after, lovely prompter, but I hope you enjoy this nonetheless! This is my first creature!fic, and I pushed myself harder than I have in a long time writing it. I could probably have written another 10K, but overall, I’m quite proud with how it turned out in the end.
> 
> A thousand thank yous to my lovely beta “josephinestone” for offering to help so last minute and for doing such a wonderful job (all remaining mistakes are mine), and to the lovely mods for running this awesome fest. I’m so glad I got to be a part of it this year. <3
> 
> Lyrics I took the title from:  
> “I’m only a man with a candle to guide me,  
> I’m taking a stand to escape what’s inside me,  
> A monster, a monster,  
> I’ve turned into a monster,  
> A monster, a monster,  
> And it keeps getting stronger.”

There’s nothing. No feeling but the cotton tingle of the sterile air. No taste but the sandpaper dryness of my tongue. No smell but the sharp antiseptic. No sound. No sound but the howling in my ears.  
  
I look at my hands, the lines on the palms crisscrossing, sketched out, unfinished. They all end abruptly, without warning. No tapering tips. No infinite branches like the ones I studied in Divination. Chiromancy is bollocks, of course, but sitting here now, I can’t stop staring at the ends. Heart line, head line, fate line—all ending in sharp stops. As though someone erased the last bits. Cut my hand off somewhere early.  
  
There’s blood under my fingernails. It’s dry now. Dry enough to flake. How long had I been here? Two days? What day is it? It can’t be. I can’t remember. The Healer—she stares at me like I’m touched in the head. I watch her lips move but can’t hear what she’s saying. Not over the howling.  
  
The howling…  
  
There’s a flash of black, clouded sky. I feel the screaming in my chest, the sharp pain, like a  _Crucio_  to the back. The smell of grass, wet earth, pine bark, and metal—iron—fill my nostrils. But it isn’t metal. It’s blood. It’s everywhere, drowning out the pine, the earth, the grass. It colours my eyes and stings my tongue, and I taste terror. Flashes and grey-black gradients all turn red, and there’s nothing. Nothing but a bright white light so blinding it hurts; it hurts down into my blood, into the shards of my bones, the marrow leaking out.  
  
It’s still with me, the light. The bright white, round light.  
  
The blood under my nails smells strong. The tang of the iron—I think I might be slightly deficient—is almost all I can smell suddenly. The numbness ebbs; something cuts through. Another smell is there. Subtler than the iron. Nearly lost under the antiseptic smell. It’s like oregano. Oregano, thyme, and cumin.  
  
Oh yes. I know that smell. Dittany.  
  
“—any was effectively applied to all your wounds, and the blood replenishing potions have taken effect, but the wounds were tainted with saliva, and the infection has taken hold.” The Healer’s words barely begin to register. Her face is pinched, her mouth pursed. As though I’m something monstrous, rotting, spewing pus. I’m disgusting to look at. “Here is some literature regarding your condition,” she says, handing me a set of pamphlets with ironically catchy titles. I move to take them, the words on their fronts not quite penetrating the haze in my brain, but she snatches her hand away before I can take hold of the parchment. The pamphlets fall into my lap and slide to the floor, scattering across the ground. She makes no move to collect them and neither do I. “It is my obligation as Healer to report you—”  
  
“Report me?” I ask. The howling dissipates, but the smell of blood is still overwhelming me. I can taste it, in my throat and on my tongue. As though I’ve drank goblets full of it.  
  
  
The Healer huffs. “Have you not been listening? You’ve been infected. I have to report you to the Ministry.”  
  
The world sharpens at the edges, her features, thin and pale and full of disgust, come into greater focus. There is hatred in her eyes. I’ve never met her. Perhaps she saw my name and remembered the war. Perhaps she lost someone.  
  
“Infected?” I say, as though someone else is speaking. She steps back.  
  
“With Lycanthropy,” she says, and the sick feeling returns. My stomach churns, full of liquid, but I don’t remember drinking. “It’s Ministry regulations. I’ve got to report any newly infected Werewolves—”  
  
“You’ll do no such thing.” I know that voice. The smell of over-brewed tea and varnish, mixed inexplicably with maple syrup, wafts into the room. My hands are shaking, cold; I want to wash the blood off them, to scrape beneath my fingernails. Why didn’t they wash my hands?  
  
“Excuse me?” The Healer turns to see Harry Potter standing imposingly in the doorway. His jaw is a hard line, his expression harsh. His robes smell of talcum powder, which makes no sense. Seeing who it is, the Healer stammers several times and says, “Mr Potter, I’m afraid this is a confidential matter between Healer and patient, and you’ve no right—”  
  
Potter walks in and crowds the Healer. He’s no taller than she is, but he looks it. “Confidential is an interesting word, given you were about to breach that confidentiality by illegally disclosing your patient’s information to the Ministry.”  
  
The Healer blinks and blusters. “Ministry Regulations from the Werewolf Registry—”  
  
“Have changed,” Potter says. He produces a badge of sorts. “I’m with WSS, but of course you don’t know that. No one in this bloody hospital talks to each other. St Mungo’s has got to get its shite together.” He shakes his head, and I’m assaulted with the smell of soap and bathwater. I shut my eyes, gritting my teeth against the onslaught. “Honestly, you’re lucky I don’t report you to the DMLE. You cannot report a Werewolf to the Ministry without his or her consent. Now get out.”  
  
The Healer grimaced at Potter, shot me a withering look, and disappeared somewhere beyond the door. I looked down at my hands. Something by my neck began to hurt. I touched along the collarbone and found three long, winding scars. They were deep, thick, nearly obliterating the fine web-work of scars beneath them.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
I look up, the tilt of the world shifting, and found Potter looking concerned.  
  
“Am I all right,” I say, very slowly, weighing each word on my tongue as I speak it. The haze clears in the face of Potter. In the face of him and his words and his confusing smells.  
  
“Your wounds are healed,” he says, taking stock of me. “At least they got that right. But you don’t have to report, you know. You’ve not done anything wrong. You have rights.”  
  
Something finally broke in me, the brittle calm shattering. “Have I? What rights have I got, Potter?” I’m on my feet without feeling myself move. Potter stands his ground before me, beneath me. I feel massive, giant. I feel empty and hollow. “Did I have the right to get mauled? The right to be infected?” I search around for my cloak, then realize I didn’t come here on my own. Did I even have anything with me?  
  
I find a robe that seems like mine, but when I put it on it’s torn at the neck, over the shoulder. It’s covered in blood. The smell of it nearly knocks me out. I don’t care.  
  
“Draco, wait,” he says. “I’m with Werewolf Support Services. I’m just here to help.”  
  
“Help me with what?” I snap, searching for my wand. “Bet you’re loving this. Finding me here, finding me—” I choked on the words. “If you wanted to see a freakshow, Potter, I’m afraid you can’t. I’m not performing today. Come back tomorrow.” I snatch my wand from the table and try to focus to Disapparate.  
  
“Wait, Draco,” he says again, and hands me a card. “Take this. If you need anything, this is how you can find me.” I take the card, glaring at the green lettering and the golden logo. I can’t tell if it’s a sun or a moon. Maybe both. What’s wrong with Potter? The parchment is thick, heavy, feels rough under my fingertips. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Sorry?” I say, unable to think of a more ridiculous thing he could have told me. “Sure, Potter. You’re sorry. Sorry they didn’t let me die when they found me. Well, guess what? So am I.”  
  
I Disapparate to a crestfallen look on his face. Good. So at least it’s a disappointing day all around.  
  


***

  
  
The main hall is empty, a draftiness playing in the tapestries I haven’t known since the last months of the war. It was always cold, empty, then. Home wasn’t home. It was just a cavern in which I lived sometimes.  
  
The torn fabric from my robes hangs limply, peeling from me like boomslang skin. The blood smell is stronger here, nearly noxious. I run to my rooms and rip the robes from me. I’ll never wear them again anyway.  
  
I cast into the hearth and lit a fire, the warmth of the flames sending my skin searing with sensation. Every piece of wood gives off a unique odour. Cedar, oak, ash. Birch? Some sweet and fresh. Some dry. One sour. It fizzles in my nostrils and settled on my tongue, the way dried billywig stings spice the air when you cut them. I don’t like it. How had I never noticed that sour scent before? I make a note to myself to let the house-elves know not to use that wood ever again.  
  
As I’m smelling the fire, I can almost forget everything. For a moment, it disappears. Nothing happened. Not a thing. I’m waking up late from a party. It’s just been a night out, like always. No nightmares come to life. No attack, no pain, no changing. But I catch a glimpse of myself, naked and still stained with blood in places, in the mirror. And I know.  
  
I know I can’t ignore it. The blood smell is still there.  
  
“Lottie!” I cry, nearly panting. I can’t breathe properly. The smell of the fire and the wood and the blood—it’s too much. I’m choking against. And now there’s dust underneath it, and wood varnish, and cotton, and paint, and I’m on my knees, fingers digging into my scalp and my cheeks and my nose, desperate not to smell it anymore. “Lottie!”  
  
A pop much louder than it should be, with a soft crackle and a hiss just before it, tells me she’s here. “Master Draco,” the house-elf says. Her voice is soft, pitched just right, not too high, not too low. There’s gravel to it, but more like the sand beaches of Anguilla than the rocky shores in Devon. She smells of pastries—flour and butter and sugar—which I’m thankful for.  
  
“Bath,” I say, barely able to hold on to the scent of baked goods over the blood. “Please.”  
  
“Yes, Master Draco, Sir,” she says, and pops away. There’s a faint smell of charcoal when she disappears. Has that always been there? I think I’m imagining it, smelling the burning wood instead, or just gone loopy from the overwhelming sensations.  
  
The bath’s only in the next room, but house-elves insist on popping everywhere. I crawl my way to the bathroom, the cold stone tiles comforting me. Stone smells safe, clean, unyielding. Stone doesn’t overwhelm me.  
  
“Which soap would you like, Master Draco?” Lottie asks, and I nearly vomit on the floor.  
  
“Lavender,” I say; it’s the only thing I can think might calm me, but I’m wrong. She pours the lavender bath soap into the tub, and I become painfully aware of the unnatural quality of it. I’m never buying from Tulip and Rose’s ever again. “Stop! More water!”  
  
I drag myself up to the lip of the tub and peer into the filling pool. After a while, the lavender fades enough to be overwhelmed by the steam. Steam smells—well I suppose that’s the headline. It smells.  
  
Without waiting to test the water, I drop into the bath, immersing myself fully and nearly inhaling in my relief. Nothing smells  _under_  water.  
  
It’s glorious, relaxing, soothing. The water scalds my skin and washes away the blood. I open my eyes, the lavender stinging slightly as I do, to watch the swathes of red swirl around me as the blood dilutes away. For a moment, I’m not there. I’m not awake, not in pain. For a moment, I think I can start my life again, as someone else, some other time.  
  
But the need for air pushes me to the surface. I break through, water splashing everything, and inhale deeply. The blood smell is gone, thankfully, as are the subtler scents. Only the lavender and the steam and the stone remain now. And the baked goods.  
  
I open my eyes to find Lottie still there, wringing her little hands and looking something between terrified and apologetic.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Lottie swallows hard.  
  
“Lottie has a letter from Mistress for Master Draco, Sir,” she says. I perk up slightly, leaning back straighter against the slanted side of the tub. She pulls out a scroll, carefully sealed with the Malfoy crest. A brief whiff of India ink and wax. With a gesture, I tell Lottie to read it to me. I wondered why Mum hadn’t been at the hospital. Lottie clears her throat, a small cough, and begins to read.  
  


_“My dearest Draco,_

_I hope you made it home safely. The Healers informed us of your status. We are assured you will receive the best care. But given the circumstances, your father and I feel it best we leave the Manor to you. We’ve collected our essentials and will be gone by the time you receive this letter. We’ll send along elves whenever necessary, and of course Lottie will be at your disposal at all times. We know what she means to you._

_For our protection, I’m afraid I cannot tell you our whereabouts. I’m sure you understand, sweetheart. Much progress is made every day in magical remedies and treatments. We hope to be with you again soon._

_Your father and I love you very much, sweetheart. We’ve left you something special to mark the day. It’s wrapped in your bedroom. Happy birthday, Draco._

_With all our love,_

_Narcissa and Lucius_

  
  
The water ripples before me, steady patterns of wrinkles on sheer fabric, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m shaking. I shut my eyes and try to swallow against the thickness in my throat.  
  
“Fetch me the gift, Lottie, please,” I say, but my voice sounds wrong. Hollow and echoing. She pops away and back so quickly I can barely discern the pause between the sounds. But I do. I hear it.  
  
The box she offers me is small, rounded, and covered in iridescent green paper. The ribbon is silver, as usual. Inside is a padded, velvety pillow, and atop the pillow sits a silver ring with a single stone set into the band. The stone is perfectly circular, a pearlescent white. The tiniest sliver, to one side, is black, as though blotted out by a shadow. A moonstone.  
  
I slip the ring onto my finger and sink back down into the water. Under water, there are no tears. I hold my breath.  
  
_Happy Birthday, Draco._  
  


***

  
  
The Manor is hollow, gutted, all long tunnels with no ends, caverns and burrows with nothing to live in them. All the house-elves are gone. All but Lottie. They took everything with them except what was mine. What they decided was mine.  
  
My bedroom and adjacent sitting room are intact, with all my old school books and notebooks and Quidditch trophies from another life. But once I step out the door, into the corridors that once lead to my parents’ quarters, their sitting rooms, my father’s office, my mother’s potions lab—all empty. The library is nearly barren, the only books remaining are about magical creatures, some key potions textbooks, and a few—darker—alternatives to magical illnesses.  
  
I wander, stumbling and sluggish through the halls, one hand tracing an uneven line on the wall, the other trailing a half-empty bottle of Ogden’s Old. My father would be appalled at my tastes, but Blishen’s Firewhisky smells strongly of acid and rot, thinly veiled by the hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. Ogden’s smells of fire. Which seems more appropriate anyway. Burn away the memories and the hopes for my future. All up in smoke.  
  
Another swig leaves my throat raw, rough, with the tang of alcohol and hot acid tearing up my taste buds. At least I’m not smelling as much as I was before. Either I destroyed some of my senses with the whisky, or I pickled the part of my brain that recognizes them. Either way, I’m feeling better.  
  
A painting catches my eye from around the corner. I trudge toward it, rippling the rug beneath my imbalanced feet, and stop before it. I squint at the man in the frame, having trouble recognizing him for a moment. The frame keeps swaying back and forth on the wall, and I reach for my wand for a brief moment, but the man in the portrait snaps to attention and scowls at me.  
  
“A Malfoy heir should never appear so intoxicated he can’t read,” he snaps, looking down his bloody long nose at me. A nose that long should have a purpose other than to be painted and long and stupid. But he’s a bloody painting; he can’t smell shite. Can’t smell me, or the firewhisky, or the acrid formaldehyde smell of his canvas. I squint-glare at him some more before he points to the plaque below his portrait. I stumble backward to try and make out the letters, but they’re all blurry and moving.  
  
“Sod it, just tell me who the fuck you are again,” I say, and he gasps, the blighter.  
  
“I am Septimus Malfoy,” he harrumphs, “only the most influential and well-regarded patriarchs of this noble—”  
  
“Ahhh Septi!” I cry, arms wide. “That’s right! That’s why you’re still here! Father bloody hated you and your pontica—pontaf—pontificating lectures about how we—Malfoys—should behave and operate and function and bollocks.” A fit of laughter bubbles up in my belly, accompanied by something fouler and less enjoyable. “He left you here with me! And didn’t tell you!” I fall over onto the floor, whisky bottle rolling away to spill out into the carpet. “I bet he’s hoping I’ll rip you to shreds next moon.”  
  
Even through my whisky-haze I can see the look of horror on his face. “M-moon?” he asks.  
  
I snigger and hiccough. “That’s right, Septi, old scamp. You’re precious Malfoy heir is a  _werewolf_.”  
  
He looks at me in undisguised disgust, and I growl at him. He starts. So I bark. I bark and bark and howl until I cough and vomit on the floor. Still just smells like fire.  
  
When I look up, he’s gone.  
  
“Good riddance,” I mumble, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. I struggle back to my feet, pick up the fallen bottle of firewhisky, and blunder back to my room. “I don’t need you.”  
  


***

  
  
The fire in the hearth smells like Hogwarts. It’s the books, I think. The shelves of my school things are empty, and I pick up another notebook and toss it into the flames. Yes. The books make the fire smell more like Hogwarts.  
  
“ _Wingardium Levi-oh-sa!_ ” I flick my wand, exaggerating the spell, and send my old Arithmancy homework into the hearth.  
  
The heat licks at the edges of me, my skin tingling from it. My robes are littered around the room in piles, here and there. The firewhisky made me hot so I took them off, shedding them like skin, and then I got cold.  
  
I take another swig from the bottle, but it comes back empty. Glaring blearily through the neck of the bottle, I toss it aside as well.  
  
“Lottie!”  
  
The familiar pop, and there she is. Standing, smeared in chocolate, covered in powder, and looking very suspicious.  
  
“Need more,” I say, pointing at the bottle. “Odgen’s. OG—DEN’S.” My mouth is having trouble with some consonants. And vowels. “No Blithering one. No.”  
  
Lottie glances at the bottle. She nods her little head and disappears, and the smell of charcoal passes me by. She pops back some time later, possibly moments, possibly an hour, I’m not really counting anymore, and hands me a new bottle. The cork is conveniently removed. Bless her little elf heart.  
  
But Lottie doesn’t leave right away. I try to raise one eyebrow at her, but I’m quite sure both of them go up, and make me look more like I’m suspiciously squinting into the sunlight than questioning her. Still, I need answers. I prefer to be alone when I’m drinking myself into oblivion on my werewolf birthday.  
  
The house-elf hesitates, shifting from foot to foot, before holding out a small platter. It takes me a moment. Probably several of them. I’m blinking slowly at the thing on the platter when I realize what it is.  
  
It’s a chocolate cake, slightly lopsided but generally well-decorated. There are little golden snitches dotted around the edges of the cake and looped script that reads  _Happy Birthday Master Draco_.  
  
For a long time, I can only stare at the cake. It smells of chocolate and raspberries and cardamom and—pomegranate. It’s the best thing I’ve smelled since waking up in hell, and it was made for me, without asking, by my house-elf.  
  
“Leave,” I say, before I can say anything else. Lottie flinches slightly, and I want to throw myself into the fire. She blinks her giant eyes at me, sets the platter on the side table, and disappears.  
  
The fire rages suddenly, books flying around the room, and I’m screaming, but I can’t hear myself. There’s glass in my throat, shredding my lungs, and the new bottle of firewhisky smashes to pieces against the wall.  
  
I drag myself over to the cake, pulling it off the table. It slides on the platter, leaving a smear of red—raspberry sauce that bleeds along the silver and onto my fingers. Digging my hands into the cake, I tear apart the word  _happy_  and smear it into my mouth, across my face. It tastes of rich chocolate and pomegranate and tears and the sweetest raspberries I’ve ever had. I wipe at my face with the back of my hand, sobbing into the cake and screaming when I don’t notice.  
  
The scars on my chest, the massive gashes closed by magic, pinch and sting as I move, throwing myself around. I scrape at them with chocolate-caked fingers. I need to open them, to reopen them. Why did they save me? Why didn’t they let me die there on the ground, in the mud of the full-moon massacre. I wasn’t the only one there. I know I wasn’t, but I can’t remember anything else.  
  
I can only remember the pain and the fear that tastes like vinegar and hemlock and the wanting it all to end.  
  
The glass of the firewhisky glints around me, a debris field of broken promises. My fingers find the edge of the bottle, larger than the other pieces, curved like a scythe and smelling of fire and smoke. It smells sharp, like ice on a cold winter day.  
  
Scraping the sharp edge of the glass down my arm, I wipe away the chocolate and raspberry. I wipe away the tears and leave only the skin. The skin on my unmarked arm. It becomes clear.  
  
Blood rushes through me, beating, pulsing, and I can smell the iron tang again. It fills my mouth, but I don’t feel sick or raw or hurt. I feel hungry.  
  
So easy. The answer is right here. No one will come; no one will find me. Lottie won’t come back until morning. No one else is looking. I just need to press down and pull, just once, maybe twice. Just a bit, and I don’t have to fear the moon again. Just a bit and I never have to see the monster. I never have to smell the blood and the mud and the moon.  
  
The broken glass shines in the moving fire, again and again, and the tint of the bottle is green. I see the flashes of green, again and again, and hold my breath and drag the glass across my skin and—  
  
A gasp and a sob, and I throw it against the wall. It cracks, breaks into more pieces, none useable. My hands are digging at my eyes, pressing my eyelids so hard it hurts, and I’m screaming.  
  
Too much of a coward to be a hero. Too much of a worm to be a snake.  
  


***

  
  
’S cold in my bedroom now. Fire’s out. No more books to burn. Can’t be arsed to get wood and considered using some pieces of furniture. But I like my furniture. ’S’all that’s left.  
  
Drinking mead now. Hate mead. ’S shite.  _Oak matured_. Cask they used wasn’t cleaned right. Can smell it in the bottle. Has a vinegar scent. And decay. Does no one check these things?  
  
Fucking mead. ’S’all I got.  
  
Found it in an old trunk. Bottle half-empty. Covered in dust. Under old robes don’t fit ’nymore. Probably nicked it from parents one time for a party. Probably when I figured out how much I hate mead.  
  
Robe around me’s too big. Hands search for sleeves but don’t find any. I remember it’s a blanket, not a robe. Tassels on the ends. A rug maybe?  
  
I search around some, looking for clothes. Piles and piles of shite—broken odds and ends, dirty things once made for me—to find a robe. Any robe. Find pants and socks and robes, finally, and pull them on. Not sure I did it right, but finally warm. Fingers not so blue.  
  
Something flies off the table, flittering like a Snidget. I jump to catch it, but world tilts. On the ground, arms hurting, head spinning. Snidget was just a card. Just a stupid piece of parchment.  
  
Smells like talcum powder and syrup. Tongue flicks the end, tasting paper. Nope, doesn’t taste like syrup. Just paper. Trees and ink and dye. Still better than mead.  
  
Green lettering says something. Golden sun-moon.  _Potter._  
  
“Fuck you, Potty,” I mumble, glaring at the card. Eyes squinting at the lettering. Not just his name now. Address below. And writing on the back. His writing. Scrawled. By hand.  
  
_If you every need to talk, or fight, or whatever—ring me._  
  
“Potty, Potty, Potter.” Words have no meaning. “Asking me on a date. Want to fight you. Sure. Let’s fight.”  
  
Wand pointed at the paper, as if he’ll pop out and duel me here. Head hurts. No, I’m supposed to go to him.  
  
“Scared, Potter?” I say to the paper. On my feet now, somehow. “ _You wish,_ ” I mimic, high-pitched, and snigger to myself.  
  
Handful of Floo powder. I throw it at the hearth and say, “Potty, Potty, Potter’s!”  
  
Nothing happens. No fire. Floor doesn’t work without fire. Not a real address, either, I reckon, but fire’s more important.  
  
Parchment laughs at me. Fine. No Floo. I’ll Apparate and splinch myself. That’ll show you.  
  
Holding the card tight, my fingers pressed on the sun-moon thing. Focusing on the address. Somewhere in London. Seems familiar. Focus, focus.  
  
Determination. Destination. Debilitation.  
  
Wait, no. Not right.  
  
The lurch hits me in the stomach. Wanna vomit, so I do. No choice. Appear in front of a door somewhere, all arms attached. Haven’t lost anything but the contents of my stomach.  
  
No vomit in sight. Splinched my puke. Not sure what that means.  
  
The door is green. Or black. Or some other colour. ’S dark. Can’t tell for sure. Smells of petrol. Muggles.  
  
Blinking at card, the whole world is swaying. I look at the door.  _Number Twelve._  
  
Hit the knocker, but it doesn’t make sound. Only hurts my hand. Not doing this right.  
  
“Potter!” I’m screaming but not sure anyone can hear me. “Potty, Potter, Potted, Pottah!”  
  
Nothing happens. Wind picks up a bit. Cold again. Time to sit down. Curl up under robes. Think they might be too short for me. Old ones? Pull them tight. No stars in the sky. Smell petrol and rubbish. Or rubber. Not sure.  
  
“Stupid Potty,” I mumble, but too tired to talk more. Close my eyes for a minute. World will stop spinning. Yes.  
  


***

  
  
“Draco?” The voice is soft, husky, low. Whispers on the wind. It’s almost comforting, warm. The accent is middle-class. I’m not at home.  
  
Cracking one eye open and wondering why my head feels as though a Mountain Troll was using it for beater practice, I find Potter’s face hovering above me. Explains the accent, I suppose.  
  
Potter doesn’t move away when I open my eyes. He just stands there, looming. His eyebrows knit together. For a moment, I can’t smell anything, and I think I’m cured, escaped the hell I woke up in the day before. But the breeze passes over me and brings with it the smells of everything around me. Asphalt and rubber and petrol and rubbish bins and iron and tea and bathwater and cucumber soap. Beneath the layers of scents are more. Blood and vomit and sweat.  
  
“What’re you doing here, Potter?” I grumble, trying to cover my face with the sleeve of my robe and failing. He makes a sound something like a laugh.  
  
“I live here,” he says quietly. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I—” I start, then open my eyes again. The sun pierces my vision, and I shut them again, blinking around myself. I’m on the ground. It’s hard. The hard ground. Outside. Why am I outside?  
  
I scramble to my feet, but the ground moves under me and my balance is off. I tumble into Potter’s arms, a waft of all the odors on him reaches me. He’s the tea and the bathwater and the cucumber soap. And something else. A subtle musk, lightly spiced, with a hint of—maple syrup.  
  
“Bit early for something that sweet, no?” I mumble, and Potter rewards me with a confused look. Good. Now we’re on even ground. “You gave me your card, remember? Do you have some kind of head trauma or was that a practical joke?”  
  
Potter seemed well past confused and comfortably in the realm of perplexed. “Head trauma?”  
  
I realize I’m still in his arms, face in his chest smelling him—it’s better than rubbish and petrol, anyway—and I try to extricate myself. “I smell blood somewhere.”  
  
Potter, damn him, helps me to my feet, arms held out to either side of me once I’m standing as though he’s afraid I’ll topple over again. I make a show of dusting down my robes, which I now realize are old school robes. From fourth year. They’re about three inches too short. This in no way shows on my face.  
  
“I think that’s you, Draco,” he says quietly, and I gaze down to where I was sleeping. The step upon which I’d laid my head was stained red in a small blotch. I raise a hand to my temple; I feel the bump where I must have smacked my head when I fell asleep. Or unconscious. That might explain the throbbing assault on my skull from the inside. Or perhaps the firewhisky is to blame. I vaguely remember drinking some. “Are you all right?” Potter pulls back slightly when it becomes apparent I won’t keel over. Still, he seems worried. I can smell it on him. A hint of sweat mixed with acid and a pinch of sweetness. It’s almost imperceptible under the rest, and it’s gone in a flash. “Why don’t you come inside?”  
  
He opens the door, glancing around. A horn blares nearby, sending shooting pains through my skull, and I glare at him. He doesn’t want to be seen with me?  
  
“Afraid someone will spot you with a we—” I start, the word dying on my tongue, and immediately walk through the door into his entryway.  
  
“We’re in the middle of Muggle London, Draco,” he says calmly. “The wards around Grimmauld Place protect the inside of the house, not the outside. We’re shielded in here.” He walks by me, and he gestures to a sitting room. The entryway is a narrow hall and decorated in soothing, bright tones. Pale blues and greens, with warm wood. The sitting room houses cream-coloured sofas and driftwood-like tables. It’s warm and cold and rustic and polished and nothing at all I associate with Potter.  
  
The whole place smells of pancakes, syrup, and magic. Magic like cinnamon spiced rum, campfire embers, and the bubble of water in a pewter cauldron. For a fleeting moment, it smells like home.  
  
“I thought this was your office,” I say, eyes fluttering shut momentarily. My throbbing skull and unsettled stomach make walking difficult. Only the smell of the sitting room calms me, and I decide that a smell that can calm is worth its weight in gold. Or whatever makes sense for scent. “The card you gave me was a business card.”  
  
“It is my office,” he says from somewhere I imagine the kitchen to be. The sofa calls to me and my exhausted brain. I settle into it as if into bed, then remember myself and sit up again. The pillows are plush, soft as rabbit fluff. They smell of cotton. “I work from home. I find it easier when some of my clients need support out of office hours.”  
  
Potter returns with the tea in a pale green pot with mismatched teacups. The cups are pale green and blue, rimmed with bands of white or dark blue. Simple. He pours me a cup. It smells of bergamot. Earl Grey. He offers milk and sugar, but I shake my head. The cup is warm against my palm, the smell of tea crystalizing in my mind. This is tea he brewed for himself.  
  
I hold the cup, breathing in the smell of it. Every leaf has its own flavour. Every ingredient so obvious, so clear and clean in the boiled water. Potter sips his and places it back on the table. He watches me in silence, almost comfortable, and I can pretend we’re old friends just meeting for a cuppa and a chat. But we aren’t. We’re not old friends, and I’m not here because I want to be, or because he wants me.  
  
I’m here because I’m a cause. I need saving, and who better to turn to than a saviour?  
  
“This was a mistake,” I say, setting the tea down without drinking. The smell of blood and vomit clings to me. How much did I drink last night?  
  
“Coming here pissed in the middle of the night or coming at all?” Potter asks. He’s not jeering, not trying to be smug. The only way I can describe him is genuine, and that terrifies me.  
  
“I should go,” I say, getting to my feet, but Potter reaches out.  
  
“Draco, wait,” he says, and I draw my hand back from his sharply, flinching.  
  
“Why do you keep using my name?” I snap. “I didn’t give you the right. No amount of false intimacy will make this go more smoothly.”  
  
The room feels cold suddenly. I wrap my arms around myself, shaking. A flash of bare arm and glass hits me from the previous night. The sleeves of the robe are too short, and it frustrates me.  
  
“It is your name, though,” Potter says after a moment. The tea is cooling. It doesn’t smell as strong now. “Draco. That’s still who you are.”  
  
I tug at the sleeves and run a hand through my hair. The blood from my temple is caked there. Another bath. That’s what I need. No lavender this time. I suppose lavender and werewolves never did mix. I feel sick.  
  
“What would you know about it?” I snap, trying to focus on something to settle me. I think I might vomit again, but there’s only cream sofas and blue carpets and Earl Grey tea. No good place. “What do you know about anything?”  
  
Potter doesn’t move. I want him to. I want him to move. To come at me. Or to run. To kick me out of his home, to throw the tea at me, to hex me, curse me, or pretend we’re in school again when the world made sense. Back in the days before I understood how fucked everything was. How many lies I’ve been told.  
  
“What you’re going through is normal,” he says, and I laugh. It sounds completely mad. Mental. Normal. What is that? “And I know it seems impossible right now, but you will get through this. Things will get better.”  
  
I bark a laugh and immediately get quiet. Everything sounds unnatural to me now. “How will they get better? I’ll start smelling blood everywhere, and  _like_  it. Maybe I’ll start eating my steaks rare. Maybe I’ll start eating other things.” I lurch over, my throat tight and my stomach churning. Hands on my knees, I gag at the ground, trying not to. No sick on the carpet. “The only werewolf I’ve ever really known was Fenrir Greyback,” I say after a minute, when my head clears a bit. “And he’s not what I’d call a shining example to follow.”  
  
Potter leans forward, trying to be closer without getting closer. Maybe he’s afraid of me. Maybe he’s disgusted. Maybe he’s mental too. “Well you knew Greyback, but I knew Lupin. And he’s proof you can be a werewolf and still move on with your life. You can still have meaningful connections, relationships—”  
  
“Learned a lot from him, did you?” I hiss, gritting my teeth against the wave of whatever this fresh hell is. “In his classroom in off hours. Maybe when he took you to his office? Got to know him  _personally_?”  
  
Potter’s expression was hard, the smell of him angry, like rain on a raging fire and garlic burning on a skillet.  
  
“Draco.”  
  
“You didn’t know Lupin,” I say, refusing to look at him anymore. The pain in my head increases, and I wonder if you can die of a headache. I step back from Potter, who looks as though he might get up and try to stop me again. “But he has one quality I can aspire to.” He draws my gaze, and I find him staring into me. “He’s cured now.”  
  
Potter is on his feet, reaching out, as I Disapparate.  
  


***

  
  
I’ve spent the majority of the week in the bath. I found some bath salts that don’t make me want to vomit and die; Mother left behind a set of green tea products. The slightly nutty scent worked well for a few days. But getting more accustomed to the smell, maybe I noticed it less.  
  
Day after day, the overwhelming pitch of my senses eased. I didn’t smell everything, all the time, until my head felt like it would explode. I still noticed odours I never had before, but they were bearable. And those that weren’t…  
  
I cast a  _Lumos_  into the brightly lit room, breathing in deeply near the tip of my wand. Lumos smells of sunshine and hearth fire.  _Nox_  smells like extinguished candles with a subtle note of sulfur. I’m not quite a fan of that one, but it’s the only way to cast  _Lumos_ , anyway.  
  
Casting spells and smelling the residual magic wiles away the time, anyway.  _Accio_  is my favourite so far, with a scent of wind and oak and dust just after rain.  _Reducto_ , while much more fun to cast, smells of smoke and burning herbs and gravel. Cheering charms are good, as well. They smell of butterbeer and sweets and treacle. But I don’t cast those much.  
  
A pop and a flicker of charcoal and I know Lottie’s come to check on me.  
  
“Any post?” I ask, staring straight ahead at the bright tip of my wand. It leaves shadows blotting my vision.  
  
“Not yet, Master Draco,” she says, and the note of anguish in her voice strikes me harder than her answer.  
  
I wrote to Pansy and Blaise days ago. Did my parents warn them? I understand being reluctant to come visit me, but this was a new low, even for them. Avoiding me altogether? It’s not even close to the full m—  
  
I’m not dangerous to anyone but myself right now. Not in daylight. I thought we were closer than that. I thought we’d do better by each other. But would I have done differently in their shoes? If I found out Pansy was—would I go visit her? Would I write right away?  
  
What would I say? What is there to say? It’s as if I’ve died. No cards, no letters, not even flowers. This is worse than dying, actually. At least if I’d died, Pansy and Blaise would have thrown a lavish party to properly mourn me.  
  
“ _Nox,_ ” I whisper, and the light flickers out. Burning wax and sulfur. Lovely.  
  
“Would Master Draco like something to eat?” Lottie asks, her voice squeaking slightly. She’s worried. Very worried.  
  
“What time is it?” I ask. I broke all the clocks in my room and haven’t left in days. The rest of the Manor holds no interest for me.  
  
“Maybe if Master Draco opened the windows—”  
  
“No!” I snap, rushing to stop her pulling the curtains. I drew them all, all the draperies, tight. Not a shard of light can creep in. Only the hearth is lit. The room is a cavern now. Fit for an animal.  
  
Lottie looks up at me with terrified, wide eyes. I sink to my knees next to her, but she’s still only half my size.  
  
“It’s nearly midday, Master Draco,” she says quietly. “Can Lottie fix Master lunch?”  
  
The desk in the corner of the room catches my eye. Once so tidy, so organized, all the parchments and quills lie in disarray atop it. An inkwell toppled and drips black rain down the side, splattering the floor. I wrote several letters to Pansy and Blaise. The last of which were more—distraught—than the others.  
  
“No, thank you, Lottie,” I say after a moment. If Pansy and Blaise want to ignore my letters they can. But it’ll be significantly more difficult to do so in person. “I’m going to Diagon Alley, today. Fetch me my robes, please.”  
  


***

  
  
Apparating takes me nearly an hour. I stand, fully clothed, teeth brushed, hair combed, wand at the ready, completely unable to force myself to pop into Diagon Alley. The clock in the hall, one of the few I hadn’t broken, ticks away, warning me I’m running out of time. Pansy and Blaise take lunch at  _Chez Marcel_  every weekday. If I wait any longer, I’ll miss them. I know this.  
  
I picture the spot just outside the little bistro, the alcove beneath the sign, covered by the canopy and next to the flowerpot filled with Bubbling Begonias, but I can’t make myself go there. I can see it all in my head—the Alley at lunch with bustling crowds picking up the necessities. Business people stopping in at Gringotts and Ministry workers nipping out for fresh air. Children running around between Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes and Honeydukes’ new sweet shop.  
  
Laughter and calm and I cannot make myself Apparate.  
  
“Get hold of yourself, Draco,” I snap, shaking out my shoulders. There are knots in my muscles all over my body. “It’s daylight. You’re being stupid.”  
  
Inhale, exhale. Slowly. One, two, three. One, two, three. Just go. Now.  
  
I open my eyes but shut them quickly. The blinking doesn’t help fight off the shock of the light. It’s particularly ineffective at escaping the cacophony of sounds and the bombardment of smells. Even with my senses weakened, I nearly collapse from the onslaught. Potions and animals—with all that comes with them—and pastries and broomstick polish and magic and goblins and gold and rubbish and brick … there’s too much. Too much to get used to all at once.  
  
I clap a hand over my nose, trying to breathe only my own skin, but it barely mutes out the other odours. Witches and wizards pass by, chattering and absorbed in their own worlds, never noticing the damage they do with their lives and how much smell clings to them. I can nearly taste the apothecary down the Alley.  
  
With my back against the window of the  _Chez Marcel_ , I try to ground myself in a specific smell. Brick and gold. The two most prominent smells in the Alley. Other than magic, anyway, but magic isn’t nearly as powerful or lasting as the others.  
  
I take a few deep breaths, focusing on the smell and pushing the sea of noise out of my mind. Once I find my footing, I straighten my robes and make my way into the shop.  
  
“Good afternoon, Millie,” I say to the young woman at the front. “I won’t be needing a table, today. Just in to speak with Pansy and Blaise.”  
  
I make to press further into the bistro, but the look on Millie’s face stops me dead. Eyes wide, mouth slightly open, she looks terrified.  
  
“I-I-I-I’m s-s-sorry, Mr Malfoy,” she stammers quickly. My heart sinks. “Ms Parkinson and Mr Zabini are not in today.”  
  
She looks as though she wants to try and bar me entrance but is too frightened to move. I swallow hard.  
  
“Did they tell you to turn me away?” I ask, my voice low, even, cold. Millie shakes her head.  
  
“N-n-not at all, Mr. Malfoy,” she says, sliding a copy of the  _Prophet_  out of my sight. “They r-r-really aren’t here.” She glances around quickly, as though searching for an exit that I’m not standing in front of. “In f-f-fact, we’re c-c-closed today.”  
  
I stand, heart pounding, staring at the only partially empty bistro and the fear on Mellie’s face. I’ve been coming here since before the war. Years now. Mellie has been working in her father’s bistro since she was barely old enough to own a wand. She’s never looked at me like this.  
  
Rolling my shoulders, I breathe in the smell of French onion soup and mussels in sauce. White wine, herbs, and ripe cheese meet my nostrils. The smell of fresh, crusty bread and duck confit. All soured now. I smell ash and rot.  
  
“You sh-sh-should p-probably leave,” she says, just as I go to turn. I stop midway, cast a dark look over my shoulder and push out the door. She squeaks as I depart, but I can hardly care.  
  
The crowd outside thins as I make my way into it. Everyone who notices me begins to move away. I stop in my tracks, in the middle of the Alley, and no one bumps into me. Not one person. They give me a wide berth, sometimes trying to way behind carts and displays to get away from me. One man saw me and turned and walked back from where he came.  
  
I stop at a cart selling papers. I drop a sickle on to the little wooden counter and pick up the  _Prophet_. Before the man behind the counter can react, I flip through the pages, scanning each article and photo until I find it. Through the smell of ink and cellulose, I pick up the acrid smell of fear, but I’m only focused on the photo and small accompanying article.  
  
An image of myself, from the last charity event I hosted for the Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare, smirks back at me. The headline next to it, however, inspires no smile.  
  
_WEREWOLF WATCH: DRACO MALFOY NEWLY INFECTED_  
  
“I don’t sell to your kind,” the man behind the cart says. Something hits me square in the chest and pings on the ground. “Leave the paper.”  
  
I blink at him for a few moments, holding the paper still, forgetting my sickle on the ground. A flame flickers and breathes in my chest. The sickness in my stomach replaced by something else.  
  
“I beg your pardon,” I say, staring evenly at him. His forehead glistens in the summer sun. The collar of his shabby green robes—wool too heavy for the season and perfumed with sweat—cuts into his neck. I can smell the fear on him. The acrid scent overwhelms every other. And something else. Iron and salt. Blood.  
  
His blood rushes to his face, through his heart, and I can smell it. Even today. My stomach rumbles. I’m hungry.  
  
“I don’t sell to your sort,” he says, his confidence waning. He tilts his head back, his chin up in defiance. Don’t do that, you fool. Make your neck an easier target.  
  
“Death Eaters?” I say, because reminding the world I’m doubly monstrous seems like a good idea. He pales, a sickly colour. I make to move closer, to drop the paper in his hands, but something rushes by my head.  
  
“Get back, dog!” someone yells, and an apple flies by me again. Then another. Another strikes me in the back, between the shoulder blades, knocking the wind from me. I stagger and another cuffs my head. Black spots dot my vision, and I’m gasping, and there’s laughter and noises I’ve not heard since school. Sneering and jeering and hate.  
  
“Filthy werewolf,” someone else spits, and I spin around, hand to my temple, eyes watering, searching for the source. “Leave us normal people alone, half-breed!”  
  
A sharp pain through my chest and stomach, and I lash out. Wand raised, I point it at the faces in the crowd. I don’t cast anything. I don’t know why.  
  
Someone else has fewer scruples, I suppose, and a blast of magic hits me square in the shoulder, knocking me to the ground. Hands scraping on stone, I barely catch myself before I feel a boot to the side. Mouth full of blood, it’s all I can smell again. I spit out on the ground, coughing and trying to protect myself all at once.  
  
They hit again and again. Someone cries, “bind his hands!” but as I prepare for the worst, a flash of light explodes beyond my eyelids, and the crowd backs off. There’s a hush and some running, and then the smell of tea and leather and maple.  
  
“Are you all right?” Potter asks, pulling me gingerly off the ground. “Do you need a Healer? Sit for a moment.”  
  
“You! Stop!” I blink around, and Weasley runs by, brown robes billowing behind him. I think he means me, but he disappears into the crowd after someone.  
  
“I’m going to assume everyone remaining here are witnesses to the attack and would like to submit formal statements in order to apprehend the suspects.” Granger. Speaking to the crowd. They immediately begin to disperse. “Despicable,” she says, but not to anyone in particular.  
  
“Draco?” Potter says, trying to keep my attention. He looks me in the eyes, from one to the other, trying to gauge the severity of the injuries. Looking for a concussion, I don’t know. His hand is on my shoulder, steadying me. I jerk out of his grasp and stagger backwards, back to a brick wall. A stack of cauldrons clatter to the ground as I swing my arm to steady myself.  
  
“Get off, Potter!” I say, one hand still to my temple. My eyes travel between Potter, Granger, and Weasley returning through the crowd, empty-handed. I laugh once. “I must be some pathetic sop for the Golden Trio to take an interest.” I shake my head, but it makes the world spin. Mouth full of blood, I spit at their feet. “Well, give up, Potter. I’m not your bloody cause. I don’t need saving. I’m not a wounded puppy—”  
  
The breath disappears from my chest. I can’t inhale. The words play in my head again and again. Potter reaches out, and I glare at him. He opens his mouth, probably to call my name, but I Disapparate again.  
  
Only place for a dog is a cage. The Manor makes a pretty good one.  
  


***

  
  
A knock at the door snaps me out of a doze—though drunken unconsciousness probably doesn’t count—and I blink through the haze of my bedroom. The air is stale, stifling. Lottie is at the door, hovering over the threshold. My sodden brain can’t comprehend why she didn’t pop in like she usually does. I wait to be assaulted by the smells of the room, the things I can’t bring myself to change. I’m hoping they’ll suffocate me soon, but it doesn’t come. Instead of each fine odour, each little detail of life imprisoned, I smell something I can’t put a name to.  
  
My head, still hazy, begins to clear. I can see, sense, better than before. Not enhanced, just sharper. As though the world has come into focus.  
  
“A visitor has come to see Master Draco,” Lottie says quietly, everything about her tone tentative. She sounds almost sheepish.  
  
“Tell them to go, I’m not up to visitors,” I say before thinking, then it strikes me that perhaps it’s Pansy or Blaise finally answering my bloody owls. Before I can add anything, the door swings open and the figure behind Lottie pushes past her into the room.  
  
“That much is painfully obvious,” Potter says as he strides forward. Crestfallen, I glare at him from the mess of my bedcoverings. I’m acutely aware of my nakedness beneath the covers as Potter takes stock of my living conditions. The hearth is a mess of soot and new wood and broken glass. Most of my books and school things are part of the ash now, while here and there are a few remnants scattered about the floor. My desk is pushed up against the bookcase and serves as a step to the boxes of hidden memories and secrets littered around the top of my bookshelves and within the ceiling stones. Robes and sheets and blankets strewn in piles around the place, pillows torn to the down feather cores, and ink-splattered parchment discarded without thought. The drapes pulled tight across the windows, no light but what I set to burn gets in.  
  
I look around disgusted. Potter looks around with a different expression.  
  
“I suppose it doesn’t count as breaking and entering if my house-elf lets you in, does it?” I say, shooting a pointed look at Lottie. Potter crosses his arms and turns to me. As he does, I catch his eye and am overcome. The smell, the one I can’t place, settles into me. My skin tingles with sensation, the softness of my blankets almost painful.  
  
“I reckon this is the only way I’ll get to talk to you without you running off,” Potter says. He looks serious. His expression set in stone, but I let the bedcovers fall away, leaving my chest and stomach bare. I lean back, head tilted against the padded headboard, and stare at him. I study him. Potter pauses, takes a slow, deliberate breath, the tension in his muscles changing. Not in his neck now, all in his shoulders, in his chest. “You can’t keep running forever, Draco. You do need to face this.”  
  
A slow blink and a smile curls at the edge of my mouth. The smell on the air courses through me, awakening me in a way I haven’t been. Not since—  
  
Everything smells hot, bright, amazing. I run my palms over the surface of my bed, arching my back and exhaling a low hum. Potter swallows. So I do something mad.  
  
I slide out of bed, leaving the covers behind, and stalk toward Potter. I’m light as air and hard as steel. “I’m not running now, Potter,” I say. With every step I take, he takes one back. “So why don’t you tell me what it is you came for?”  
  
“Draco, this is—” His head knocks against the wall as he backs into it. He starts a moment, hissing at the pain, but I crowd him in, only inches from him. The smell is coming from him somehow. I can feel it—the blood rushing just beneath his skin, pumping hard and fast, and the smell of his neck. I can smell the sweat on his forehead and the huskiness in his voice. Every time he breathes, every inch of me shivers with anticipation. “This is real. You can’t keep pretending it isn’t. I know it’s hard—”  
  
“Yes, very,” I say, pressing against him. He lets out a slightly strangled sound.  
  
“—Difficult,” he amends. “It’s difficult, but you need to deal with the reality of what’s happening to you.” I lean down, head tilted, eyes focused on his mouth, his lips, wondering what he tastes like. What does he taste like now? Now that I can taste everything, smell everything, know every inch of him. What secrets does Harry Potter keep? “You’re a werewolf.”  
  
I stop, panting. I don’t remember starting. My breathing is off, erratic, deep, heavy. So many things. I can still breathe him. The words he says are harsh, edged, something I don’t want. But now all my senses home in on him instead of me. The flicker in his eyes, the skipped beat in his heart, the rush of blood up his neck, the caught breath.  
  
“It turns you on, doesn’t it?” I say, breathing silkily into his ear. Tiny bumps raise up on his skin. “I’m a monster, an animal and my body is the cage, uncontrollable, undeniable, dangerous. And you’re hot, nearly bursting from your trousers for me.”  
  
A hand pressed hard, flat to my chest. Potter catches my eye again, his expression molten. “You’re deflecting.”  
  
A growl rises in my throat, rumbling through me. I bare my teeth at him, more animal than I’ve ever been. I lean in, speaking to his ear with rage and need and a danger that prickles on his skin. “You won’t save me.”  
  
Potter pushes me back, the look in his eyes steel. He adjusts his robes. “Not if you don’t let me.” He makes to leave but stops and turns back once. “I came to warn you tonight is a New Moon. You don’t know what that means yet, but you may feel different than usual. Behave not—like yourself. Just be careful.”  
  
As he leaves, I say, “Why? What’s the worst that could happen to me now?”  
  


***

  
  
An hour later, Potter’s gone, and I’m still hard. The smell of him won’t leave me. I can barely breathe, my entire body on fire. Every touch is glorious agony: the silk of my sheets, the thick fur of my throw, the cold stone, the texture of the wood of my bedposts. Everything hurts and everything feels more than real.  
  
I gasp, needing relief, and grab my cock. Even the roughness of my fingertips, the ridges and whorls and the lines of my palm all send new sensations through me. They thrill me, sear me, drawing out the pain. Potter’s face floats in my mind, the smell of him, the feel of his robes against my skin, and the smell of the flush on his neck.  
  
I stroke myself hard and fast, no time for lube, no need, the pain is good, the friction bringing me to life. I gasp and cry out and stroke faster. The pressure builds, the smell of Potter burning into my bones, and the sound of his voice whispering my name. I come hard, splattering myself and the sheets and the throw. I come and it still somehow smells like him. Like that thing that has no name. Just Potter.  
  
It wracks my body leaving me panting, spent, exhausted. With a flick of my wand I clean up the mess, but I can barely lift my arm to do it. Haze, calm, and a tiredness in my core overwhelm me. Blinking lazily, already close to sleep though I only woke an hour ago, I notice the ring my parents left me.  
  
For a second I think the moonstone is gone, fallen off. But, it isn’t. The pearly stone isn’t gone—it’s black.  _A New Moon._  
  
I drop my head against the pillow, arms and legs spread. Maybe I’ll have another go in a couple hours. My eyes close with a flash of Potter’s lips only inches from mine.  
  


***

  
  
It takes two days for the heady smell of Potter to leave me, but by the time it does, I’m overwhelmed with the scents of the world around me. My bedroom is almost toxic to me, but the thought of venturing out into the world proper leave my stomach feeling as though I’ve eaten stone and ground glass. I send out owl after owl, to Pansy and Blaise, using every tactic I’ve got to get them to visit. I try applying social pressure, implying threats, flat-out admitting threats, even begging. Nothing.  
  
Finally, dragging myself out of a tub filled with lukewarm water and more green tea bath salts than I care to admit, I pull on my cleanest robes and make for the door.  
  
“Lottie!” With a pop and a hint of charcoal, she arrives, looking anxious. “I am heading out to Kent for the afternoon. Please have my rooms cleaned. I will be back before dark.”  
  
Lottie, uncharacteristically, looks uncertainly at me. “Kent, Master Draco, Sir?” I eye her suspiciously.  
  
“Yes, Kent.” I adjust my robes. A slight acrid smell hits the air. “Pansy’s family estate is there. I intend to visit her, even if she won’t come here.”  
  
Lottie coughs several times and stares wildly about. “The Floo is closed, Master Draco. The magic has been finicky, Master, and Lottie arranged a fix. Lottie is sorry, but it cannot be used today. Should Lottie draw another bath instead?”  
  
She wrings her hands, and her large eyes flit back and forth to the hearth beyond me.  
  
“No, I’ve finished bathing for today,” I say. “I can just as easily Apparate there, Lottie.”  
  
She makes a motion, as if she’s going to argue with me—which is ridiculous as Lottie’s never argued with me in her life—but I don’t wait around to hear it. I Apparate away, the liquid diet I’ve been consuming only swishing around in my stomach with mild discomfort.  
  
It’s slightly foggy in Kent today. Up ahead, beyond the mist, I see the looming, shadowy outline of Parkinson Priory. A monastery up to the early 1600s, the priory was taken over by the Parkinson family, given to them by some Muggle royals I can’t be bothered to remember when they officially broke with one religious organization to set up their own. Something like that. The priory was transformed into a breathtaking if somewhat ruined estate. To passing Muggles, it looks much as it did then, though less manicured. There are rumours and stories passed around the town suggesting the priory is haunted. During the Parkinsons’ wildest parties, even Muggles can hear shrieks and laughter coming from the ruins of the monastery. It serves well enough to maintain the old tale.  
  
Of course, Parkinson Priory has nothing on the Manor or any of the other estates to my family’s name, but I still find myself impressed seeing it. Pans came by her flare for the dramatic quite honestly, I suppose.  
  
I step up the hill toward the old archway that serves as a guest entrance to the grounds. Wand out to stroke the appropriate stone, I play over the various things I might say to Pansy when I see her. Several insults for abandoning me in my time of need, a few words of understanding for the position she’s in, a pause or two for her to snipe back at me like old times, then we’d move right on to tea and forget everything else. She’d tell me about what a mess Daphne’s found herself in with her newest beau, and I’ll tell her about—well I’ll make something up.  
  
It’s as I’m thinking of the all the fantastic lies I might conjure that I stop dead in my tracks. Not my own doing, mind you. The doorway, the archway guest entrance, won’t open. The fog hovers in twinkling silence as I try to force my way through it. But the wards won’t budge, won’t allow me in.  
  
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap, unable to restrain myself. “Pansy! You are not seriously stopping me with the  _wards_.” I stroke the stone on the archway again and again with my wand. After a few more fruitless efforts, I begin hexing the stone and all the ones surrounding it. “Sod it all, Pansy, you owe me better than this! After all the shit we’ve been through, you’re going to lock me out with the wards?” I cast several more hexes, tearing the edge of my robes with a rebounding  _reducto_  I barely avoided. The tree behind me cracks violently, a shower of sparks and the smell of burning green wood washing over me. Suddenly I can smell the fog more clearly—water and wet earth and magic. All the fog is magical, not naturally occurring. There’s a blanket of something atop the priory, and I’m not meant to penetrate it.  
  
A searing in my chest and throat, and I can smell my own sweat and tears. They sting my eyes. The hedges and manicured flowers all around the edges of the grounds begin to suffocate me. Pansies and lilies and petunias and oak and ash and ferns and pine. So many smells.  
  
“Fine, Pansy, fine!” I cry out to nothing. I don’t even know if she can hear me, but I don’t care anymore. “You hole yourself away behind the wards. But you remember who was there all those nights you locked yourself out of your flat in London. And who took you in when your parents locked you out of their wards when you were caught in Brighton with a  _Muggle_. Or who was the one listening to your constant sobbing about the half-blood bird you were madly in love with who died in the war.” I cursed the closed archway again and again. “Fuck you, Pansy! Fuck you and your stupid meaningless problems and your bloody prejudices and everything else! I should have known you’d betray me too, one day.”  
  
I cursed the door one last time, the smell of soured ginger and burned sage on the air. I Disapparated.  
  


***

  
  
A thick, leather-bound album lays open on my lap. Half the pages are torn out, the photos it once held strewn in varying states of destruction across the ground and in the hearth. Photographs smell different when they burn. Different to paper and wood and everything else. They smell like magic burning. Magic burning is—not a pleasant smell. It smells like the death of hope, the breaking of the mind, the little shards of imagination left after dreams are crushed. None of that makes any sense, but that’s what magic smells like.  
  
It smells like the end of childhood. Like the war. Like those mornings I woke up and forgot for a second that Voldemort lived in my house and then remembered. It smells like the Vanishing Cabinet and the Astronomy tower and the first time I fell off a broom. It smells like  _Sectumsempra_  and the girls’ toilets on the second floor. It smells like ghosts.  
  
But I burn the photographs anyway. I burned the ones from the first summer Pansy came to visit. I burn the ones from my birthday parties, from the Slytherin common room and from the end of year parties my parents threw when I was in school. I burned the ones from when I was a child, before Hogwarts, before Potter and Voldemort.  
  
Halfway through I stop. I can’t bear the smell of the burning. I can’t bear the way the moving photographs don’t run like people in portraits do. They’re stuck in a loop, never quite starting or finishing. They loop in their movements and smiles and surprise until the fire eats them whole. And the magic dies. With the memory.  
  
The photograph in my hand is from fourth year. No one is even looking at the camera. I’m dancing with Pansy, and Blaise and Daphne are in the background fawning over some Durmstrang student. There are Beauxbatons girls and Durmstrang boys and even Granger and Krum in the distance of the image. But in the photo, the me that’s dancing doesn’t care that Granger is there. I never noticed her before today. I only saw Pansy’s smile as she laughed, and Blaise trying to look so cool and only somewhat managing. And then in the corner, partially obscured by someone else because he wasn’t dancing much—he barely knew how—I saw Vince. Vincent Crabbe, age fourteen, still alive, still happy.  
  
This was just before—just before it all fell apart. Greg isn’t even in the photo. I think he might be the one who took it. He had a camera. Liked to take photos when he thought we weren’t looking, thought we wouldn’t notice. He wasn’t as hard as I needed him to be then. I’m not strong enough for him now.  
  
I didn’t bother owling him when it happened. When I woke in hospital. I didn’t owl him then, nor any day since, and I’m not going to. He doesn’t want to hear from me. I know he doesn’t. Said as much last we spoke. I told him the same, but I didn’t mean it. He was already different before May 2nd rolled around in 1998. He was already distancing himself from Vince and I. I wanted to distance myself too, but how could I? Voldemort lived in my house.  
  
Then he was gone. After Vince did what he did, and after my trial—he was gone. I don’t even know where he is, although I think if I really wanted, Hephaestion could find him. My eagle owl can find anyone. But I won’t look for him. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t even know me anymore. I don’t know him.  
  
I can’t burn this photo. I tried—I held it over the fire and felt the heat on my fingertips. I smelled the embers and let the dying magic draw me in, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go.  
  
Now I’m sitting here, staring at friends who won’t see me, friends who died, and some people who weren’t ever and never will be, friends. And I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t do anything properly. I can’t even destroy my life with proper efficacy.  
  
I don’t understand why. Not any of the whys. I don’t understand why Vince is gone, why he did what he did. I don’t know when it is that Greg decided our friendship was toxic to him, when he changed his mind about the rest of us. I don’t know why I was so easy for Pansy and Blaise to discard. I was there for them. Or I thought I was.  
  
Maybe I never was. Maybe I’ve been as useless as a friend as I have been as everything else. I couldn’t even be a Death Eater properly. I couldn’t kill Dumbledore. I couldn’t hand Potter over to Voldemort. I couldn’t be the political weapon my father wanted me to be. I couldn’t salvage the Malfoy family name quickly enough for him. I couldn’t get him the fame he wanted for us. All I seem to manage is infamy.  
  
_Maybe I’ll be good at being a werewolf._  
  
I lurch over, half wanting to vomit, half sobbing into the photographs. I can’t do that. I can’t be that. I can’t be good at the one thing I’ve been afraid of since I was a child.  
  
Is this where my life was leading? To being what my parents taught me was a desecration of magical blood? To becoming an animal? A monster?  
  
I am the nightmare in every child’s heart, the shadow looming at the edge of the forest. I’m the subject of the stories they tell at Hogwarts to first years, the ones meant to keep them on the grounds, stop them wandering. I’m the thing that dwells in the crevices of the mind; the thing we pretend doesn’t exist.  
  
My hands shaking, I uncap the bottle of firewhisky. I’m running out; the case Lottie brought me is almost empty. But I can’t drink anything else. I don’t want to taste good; I don’t want to enjoy a second of it. Firewhisky is the only way to burn away the pain.  
  
I down the rest of the bottle. It’s got maybe a quarter left. I’m not sure anymore. Everything shifts as I look at it. Swinging in and out of focus, as though I’m on a broom I didn’t know I was riding. Someone else’s broom. Holding on for dear life.  
  
A flash of fire, like the face of a dragon in my eyes, and I feel burning. I scream, draw back. I fell toward the hearth, the fire snapping me to attention. I scramble backward on the floor, shoving things aside as I do, eyes trained on the fire.  
  
Like a room engulfed in flame, like I’m back in a memory. I can feel it all falling around me, all coming to ruin, to ash. I’m holding my mother’s wand and someone else’s waist. I can’t breathe but for the ash. I can only smell burning books and wood and the dying magic and the dying friends. I can hear the screaming still.  
  
I can’t take it. The curtains are closed, pulled tight as they go, but I know what’s outside. The moon is so close—so big and round and almost there—and I can feel it rising in me. The monster scratches at the surface, desperate to get out. I smell the blood in everything. I barely eat because I’m afraid of meat. The ring on my finger—the one I keep because I can’t bring myself to pull it off—it tells me what I feel inside my chest, in my stomach, in the shadow of my mind.  
  
The moon is coming. So close now. It’s been weeks. I knew it was coming. I know I’ve only got one night left. One night before I’m done. I burned the photos because I thought it might kill me too, but it didn’t. And I can’t now. Not seeing the people I care about, unable to actually see them or touch them.  
  
And the anger bubbles in me; I can taste it on my tongue and in my throat. I need to get away from it. I need to escape the anger. Because if tomorrow night comes, and I’m still angry, I can’t guarantee what I will or won’t do. I don’t know where to get Wolfsbane. I don’t know how to take it or when. I didn’t make it, but I should have. I could have.  
  
I’m afraid to be around people, to let them near me. Afraid of what I’ll do. Afraid of friends and family and enemies. Afraid of Lottie.  
  
_Lottie._  
  
“Lottie!” I cry, and she pops in. She looks sadly at me, scared and worried, but not afraid of me. Afraid  _for_  me. I know that look.  
  
“Yes, Master Draco?” I beckon her closer, staring still at the photograph and knowing, with cold clarity, what I need to do. I’m so useless, so fucking useless, and I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to ask, but I have to. For her sake, too.  
  
“It’s okay, Lottie,” I say, trying to soothe her, but I don’t think it’s working. She looks more alarmed now. Tang of fear. She’s sweating in the heat from the hearth. “I need you to do something for me, Lottie. It’s very important. Very important and you must promise to do it. Exactly what I say.”  
  
“Lottie always does as asked, Master Draco, all she can,” she says, and I nod slowly swallowing hard.  
  
“Yes, Lottie, you do,” I say, whispering. I can’t talk louder. Throat raw and dry. Need a drink, but I have to tell her first. It’ll be better in a minute, when she does what I need. “But this is even more important. Do you understand?” Lottie nods. “Do you know what happens tomorrow night?”  
  
She looks to the closed window. “The full moon,” she says quietly, gravelly, full of fear. I know. It’s in my stomach now, the fear.  
  
“Yes. Do you know what happens?” I ask. Lottie looks more frightened now than ever.  
  
“Master Draco will turn—” She stops herself quickly. I swallow hard, dry, again.  
  
“Yes, Lottie. I need you to do something because of tomorrow night,” I say. She nods slowly. “Doing this now will make tomorrow night better. It will.”  
  
“Anything for Master Draco.”  
  
I stare into her large eyes, the eyes I grew up with. She was there all the time. Every day, every night. She was there even when no one else was. She was there when Voldemort was, even though it was dangerous for her. She hid, but she stayed. She stayed for me, as she does now.  
  
“Kill me.”  
  
Lottie pulls back, stricken, eyes wide and full of horror. “Master Draco, Lottie can’t!”  
  
I reach for her, desperate, panting. “Yes, Lottie, yes! You must! I need you to kill me!” My face is wet, tears stinging my eyes. I can barely breathe for the panting and yelling. The photographs scatter across the ground as I jump up to get to her. “I need you to kill me, so I don’t hurt anyone else!”  
  
“Lottie won’t! No, Master Draco, no!” She’s crying. Massive tears like winter rain. I can smell the salt and the acid in her desperation. I can smell the rush of adrenaline. In me or her, I don’t know.  
  
“It’s not a request!” My words are growls, barks, not human anymore. The dying magic clogs my throat. “It’s an order!”  
  
Lottie scrambles away from me as I run after her. “Lottie won’t hurt Master Draco! Master is sick! Master needs help!”  
  
“I need to die!” I claw at the ground, and she’s cornered now. “Kill me! Kill me now!”  
  
A rush of magic, a force I haven’t felt in years, passes over me, through me, and I’m on the ground, back to the floor and wind gone from my lungs. My head knocks hard against the edge of the hearth. Stars flicker behind my eyes, and iron fills my mouth. I spit blood on the floor.  
  
“You will do this or you will find another family!” Lottie stops, her magic withdrawing, visibly hurt.  
  
“Lottie will not hurt Master Draco!” she says again, sobbing and desperate.  
  
“Fine!” I throw the first thing I see, the cloak I wore when I was attacked, at her. The torn edges still reek of blood. “Then get out!” Lottie sobs thick tears, so full of so many emotions, and all I can smell is rage. “Get out! Get out!”  
  
She disappears with a spark of sulphur, and I pull my knees to my chest, back burning against the edge of the fireplace.  
  
“I didn’t need you anyway.”  
  


***

  
  
Light stings my eyes, pinpricks through my crackling, caked eyelashes. Everything feels dry and raw—my eyes, my tongue, my head. I cough, trying to swallow but lacking the moisture. When the fog begins to clear, the pounding in my skull becomes secondary. My senses sharpen, muted only momentarily by the hangover.  
  
I’m not at home.  
  
Citrus thinly veiling ammonia, cotton and wool, a hint of dust, and the unmistakable smell of maple syrup. I crack open my eyelids, squinting around the room. Large four-poster bed. Bookcases to one side. Bed-side table with a candle. Antique carpet. Fine curtains open to the full force of the sun.  
  
Before I can turn over to shield my eyes from the agony of daylight, I find the other fixture in the room. One unpleasantly chipper-looking Harry Potter.  
  
“You kidnapped me,” I say, trying to ignore the razors in my throat as I speak. Potter offers me a tall glass of water. I ignore it and pull the covers over my head.  
  
They disappear suddenly, and I’m left half-naked on a sheet-less bed. “It hardly counts as kidnapping when you drug  _yourself_  into a stupor,” he says and offers the glass again.  
  
I push myself up this time, head spinning, stomach churning. I reach for the glass, swiping it out of his hand and downing it before my consumption from the previous night reappears. The water is ice cold, thankfully, and I breathe in the smell of it once I’m done. It helps to settle me slightly.  
  
“Breaking and entering is still a crime, though, no?” I say, dragging myself to the edge of the bed. I wonder whose room this is. “I think that even comes with a sentence to Azkaban.”  
  
Potter smiles placidly. “It does.”  
  
The smell of him begins to get to me. The fog rolls back in, and I want to vomit or die. Or both. “You don’t seem worried.”  
  
“You aren’t going to report me,” he says, all matter-of-fact and infuriatingly confident. He’s also infuriatingly stable in my mess of a world, at the moment. I stare at the ground, unsure I can keep up the banter. Potter seems unfazed.  
  
“I’m quite certain I am, actually.”  
  
“Definitely not.” As I try to get to my feet, I swoon slightly, and Potter swoops in to steady me. His hands grasp at my sides, below the arms, and I feel the heat of his body against mine. Soap spiced with white tea meets my nose. Subtle scents underneath—milk, flour, maple syrup. Why does he always smell that way? “In fact, you’re not only not going to report me, you’re going to stay here until such time as I decide you can return to the Manor.”  
  
“Why’s that?” I ask, head spinning. I push him off. The pounding behind my temples makes it difficult to look at him.  
  
“Because if you don’t, I’ll report you to the Ministry,” he says, and I feel sick again. My skin crawls, as though flobberworms have found their way under my skin. But I was never afraid of flobberworms.  
  
“The Ministry must know I’m a werewolf by now,” I say, trying for aloofness. “Everyone knows after the  _Prophet_  article, surely.”  
  
Potter retrieves a robe folded on the dresser. I recognise it as my own right away. He kidnapped my closet too, did he?  
  
“The Ministry may know unofficially that you are a werewolf, but if I report you, you will be added to the Werewolf Registry and given a level.”  
  
Muscles tensing, I smell acid on the air, but it isn’t coming from Potter. The sharp smell of fear comes from me. “I haven’t done anything. You wouldn’t.”  
  
“Incorrect,” he says. “You are a danger to yourself. That’s enough to be put on the Registry. Furthermore, you attempted to order a house-elf to commit murder, which is a breach of the House-Elf Employment Agreement, and the commission of a homicide is a crime punishable by up to three years in Azkaban.” He looks almost apologetic as he holds the knife to my neck. “So your choice is to stay here, or face the Wizengamot.”  
  
The mess of his black hair seems flatter than usual, unkempt in a more rushed way. His green eyes are dark, and the scar on his forehead stands out in stark relief to the rest of him. My eyes don’t leave the lightning bolt, the angry remnant of the second worst time in my life.  
  
“So it was a kidnapping, then,” I say. “I can’t leave, and I don’t want to be here. I’m a prisoner either way.”  
  
I pull on the robes he handed me to avoid having to look at him. How does he know about it all? Has he been watching me?  
  
A knock at the door draws my attention. Potter opens it, and a traitor walks through. A traitor carrying pancakes and syrup and tea.  
  
“Lottie has breakfast for Master Draco, Master Harry,” she says, trying to look contrite. Or maybe it’s hope in her eyes. Or maybe I’ve never been able to read a house-elf’s expression.  
  
“Thank you, Lottie,” Potter says, taking the tray from her. He sets it down on a side table and turns back to me. “Lottie came to me after you gave her clothes. My card was in the robe you threw at her. It seems she cares about you more than her job.” I grimace, wondering what kind of adult eats pancakes for breakfast on a weekday. “Which is why I hired her. She will be your attendant while you stay here, to help in your recovery.” Potter nodded to Lottie, and she disappeared.  
  
“Recovery?” I snap. The smell of fire and burning coals rises. “What is there to recover from, Potter? I’m a werewolf. That doesn’t go away. I don’t get to recover.”  
  
Potter’s expression doesn’t change. Dark and attentive, searching me out. I want to push him against the wall again, to corner him and see that look in his eyes, but I haven’t the stomach. My body won’t go, won’t rise to him. Instead, I feel the water coming back up in my throat, the slow burn of acid, and the need to scream.  
  
“As long as you look at it that way, you won’t,” he says. “But you are going to face what has happened to you. You’re going to deal with it, and you will get through it. This is not the end of your life, Draco.”  
  
“The hell it isn’t!” I’m screaming without realising it. It comes out of me like a hurricane, leveling everything in its path. “I don’t get any of the things I want! I don’t get to walk down Diagon Alley without being assaulted. I don’t get to have lunch with my friends or even see my parents! I don’t get to have a lover or a family. I don’t get to have a life, now, Potter. It was taken from me. They took my life and replaced it with this hell!” I’m larger than I’ve ever been, taking up every inch of space in the room somehow. I’m thrashing and the pillows are on the ground, and the tray of food clatters to the floor, spilling the maple syrup and the tea. I hiss out a cry as the tea scalds my arm, but nothing stops me. “I’m a monster, a beast, Potter. I should be put down, because come tonight—” and that’s when I realise it’s only hours away. It’s only hours before I change and nothing will undo that. Nothing will stop it. The last of what I have to say comes out in a whisper, “come tonight, I can’t promise I won’t kill you.”  
  
The ground comes up beneath me, swallowing me, but changes its mind as I get close. It doesn’t want me either. My knees slam against the floor, sharp pain radiating through me, but I can only feel the pounding in my head and the strangled cry as tears pour down my face, into my hands, and everything comes undone.  
  
Hands on my shoulders, on my arms, something blocks out part of the light. Potter is holding me, actually holding me, as though he wants to gather me in, but no one can.  
  
“You aren’t going to kill me, Draco.” He sounds as though he knows this the way he knows his own name. But even that knowing can be taken from you. I’m not really Draco Malfoy anymore, after all, am I?  _Pureblood, Malfoy, Slytherin, Wizard._  All these things are secondary. All of them. Secondary to—  
  
_Werewolf._  
  
“I can’t do this,” I whisper, unable to say it, unable to let him hear. He pulls me closer, and I let him, though I don’t know why. I don’t have the ‘why’ for any of it. Why he holds me, and why it’s so tight. So, pain invading my thoughts, I ask him, “Why are you doing this? You hate me.”  
  
There is a long moment, a long while, and he says nothing. He only strokes my hair and leaves the smell of flour and magic all over me. Bubbling potions and fire on pewter and the morning of a Quidditch match. He doesn’t let me go.  
  


***

  
  
I wake confused. The room is dark, full of shadows, and I lose myself in them. What day is it? What time? Where am I?  
  
It takes me time to remember the answers to these questions, and when I do, I’m still confused. This is still the bedroom Potter left me in. But the darkness panics me. Is it night? Is the moon out? Why am I not—  
  
Maybe I need to see it? I crawl out of bed and crouch by the window. The curtains are pulled tight, blocking out any light that might be beyond them. I hesitate, hand hovering before the fabric, trying to will myself to peek. They smell of dust and wool. Old. Not Potter’s style.  
  
Maybe a mistake was made. Maybe that Healer misread my file, or maybe she wanted to ruin my life and lied. There’s no shortage of people who’d love to see me fall. Maybe the moon is out, full force, and I’m still me.  
  
Maybe I can still be me.  
  
My fingers brush the edge of the fabric, but a knock at the door stops my hand.  
  
“Not dusk yet,” Potter says after the sigh of the opening door. I drop my hand, anxiety rising and disappointment flooding me.  
  
“Ah,” I say, unsure of what else. I turn to him, trying not to let the edge show in my movements, in my face, in my every detail. “So what—now?” I don’t want to admit I’ve no idea what to do, how to proceed, but he’s making me stay here anyway. I might as well find out his plan.  
  
“Sundown is in about ten minutes,” he says, and I lose the ability to breathe. I scramble for breath, but quietly, without moving. He doesn’t notice, not at first. I clench my jaw and try to force myself to inhale. “I’ve made arrangements for you.”  
  
Guards? A cage? Iron and steel or magic? Is there some kind of trap set in case I get free? Or does he plan to drug me?  
  
“Arrangements?” I say, straining as it comes out of my mouth. Potter nods and gestures toward the door. He steps out, and I force my feet to follow after. I can hear every clock ticking away the time. I can feel every moment passing, bringing me closer and closer. I draw out a breath, ragged and painful, but with it comes the flush from the moon. I can feel it swell inside me, as though something beneath the skin rumbles into life. It’s pressing ever outward, forcing my humanity down.  
  
Potter smells so good now. He leaves an invisible train in his wake, a trail of scents so uniquely Potter. Like the magic, he smells of life and the rush of adrenaline fresh from a win and the stirring heat of morning urges and the gasp for breath after too long under water and pine woods in the dead of winter and the bonfire on Beltane. Cracking branches from too much heat. Scorched stone and bubbling water.  
  
He stops at a door, and the last smell of him I get is of his blood. Rushing, gushing, beneath the surface of him. It flushes his body, and my mouth waters. I gasp, taking in more of his scent, and the panic seizes me again. The door is in his house, in the same building I’ve been in this whole time. He intends to lock me in a room? Does he think a bit of wood and wallpaper will be enough to stand between me and him when I forget myself?  
  
“It’s a portal,” he says, and I don’t move. “I’ve set up the magic with Hermione and Ron. They helped me perfect it. Helped me lay it into the wood of the doorframe. It’s sort of like a portkey. Once you step over the threshold, you are transported to another place. It’s a safe house, protected by wards and runes. You can stay there for the night, and in the morning I will come for you.”  
  
I consider the door. “And what if I get back through?” He cocks an eyebrow, as though the idea is ludicrous. “I’m generally a very resourceful person, Potter, whatever you might think. I’ve no idea how much of that resourcefulness will remain when I’ve—”  _turned into a raging, murderous animal._  
  
Potter makes to reach for me; my throat is tight and every muscle is taut. He knocks on the door once. “It’s safe. I’ve set up wards on this end as well. It’s designed so your magical signature, and your blood signature, won’t be allowed entrance until sunrise.”  
  
I nod. “And where is it I’m going?”  
  
Potter actually looks slightly apologetic. “The Shrieking Shack.”  
  
Ice floods me. I can barely stop myself from screaming already; my whole body yearns to lash out, to cry and scream and panic and beg. “Your safe house is attached to a town full of people? And only a few miles from a school full of children?”  
  
“Hogwarts is empty for the summer,” he says quickly. “And like I said, it’s protected. You won’t get out. And no one else will get in.”  
  
He hands me a cloak and a blanket, but I imagine they’re more for the last moments of daylight. I take them and open the door before it occurs to me. “And the potion?” Potter stares blankly at me. “Wolfsbane.”  
  
His expression wrinkles, his eyes narrowed, confused. “They really told you nothing at the hospital, didn’t they?” he asks, and I’m barely managing to contain the panic. I want to throw the blanket at him and run, but that would only be worse. Seconds tick by and I’m counting down the moments to my last. I don’t know what it means to forget myself, to die. That’s what I’m waiting for, though. I’m waiting to die. I’ve faced Death a few times in the past, but never like this. Never inside myself. I never  _knew_  it was inevitable.  
  
“What do you mean?” I say, rasping, nearing desperate.  
  
“Wolfsbane cannot be used for the first transformation,” he says, and everything is worse. I thought maybe I’d get to remember myself after the transformation was done, I’d get to curl up and cry myself to sleep. But now—now I really am a danger to everyone. I’m going to die and wake up a monster. Classification XXXX. “Wizards who’ve tried ended up being immune to the effects later. No one knows exactly why. It’s not a perfect solution.” Potter glances at the time. He takes my hand and ushers me through the doorway.  
  
I stumble to the side and find myself in a half-ruined old house. Torn drapes and broken doors litter the floor. Everything is grey and washed in age. I look back through the portal to find an apologetic Potter on the other side.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’d stay with you if I could, but—” He looks at the clock again. “I’ll check on you.”  
  
“No! Don’t!” I say before I can stop myself. Potter pulls back slightly.  
  
“You’ll get through this, Draco. I’ll see you in the morning.” And then the door closes, and I’m alone with my doom.  
  
There’s a mirror on the wall, shattered to pieces with only slivers of glass left in the frame. My face is wan, terrified, broken in the reflection. My hands shake. I drop the blanket and the cloak. I can’t breathe, again. I’m panting, gasping, choking for breath. I try not to think of this place, of the people that died in it. I try not to think of Snape and Voldemort and the snake.  
  
But it all comes back anyway. Why didn’t I ever get a pensieve for myself? There’s a bloodstain on the ground. It’s old. Years old. Whose blood, I don’t know, but it smells of rot. It’s dry and dead, like everything else in here.  
  
I can smell other things, too. Urine and older blood and fur and sweat. Dust and dirt and grime. Mold. So many things, so much decay. And I smell the moon.  
  
I’m crying without realising it. I’m crying and I can smell the moon. Bright and cold, like ice over a lake. It smells of darkness, and the Cruciatus Curse, and iron shackles. It smells of snake skin and the thick of the forest. It smells of winter and sleep.  
  
And then it happens.  
  
My body alights, as though each muscle turns to flame, to molten lava. My bones pull and snap and crack, as though I’d downed a bottle of Skele-Gro without needing to. Everything pulls; my skin feels too tight, too small, and my eyes burn. I’m screaming, and I’m on my knees and nothing else exists but the pain and the thought that this is what death feels like.  
  
That’s the last thing in my mind before everything goes. The wolf turns out the light.  
  


***

  
  
The nightmare is filled with flashes. A black, clouded sky. Distant screams. The sound of blood spurting. The wet  _shlock_  of something big hitting mud. A jagged light. Heavy, rumbling breaths. Rattling breaths. The rush of wind through fur. Iron and tang. A bright white light.  
  
I snap awake, jolted by the panic, and gasp for air. Immediately, I smell blood. I smell fresh blood, all around me. The flashes fill my mind again, and I struggle to my feet, spinning wildly and searching out the wreckage of what I might have done.  
  
The shack is in disarray, even greater than when I got here. The blanket and cloak Potter gave me are in tatters on the ground. There are deep gouges in the wall, around the door that leads to Potter’s house. The door is untouched, and the sight of it sparks small pinprick of hope. Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t get through.  
  
But where is the blood coming from? I look down at my hands to find them covered in red. More drips down as I look, and I see it. The gashes over my chest. The scratches over my arms. My lip is split to one side. I bled myself.  
  
I whimper in relief and stagger to the wall. My knees weaken, wobble beneath the weight of me. I can barely stand. My head is light, spinning.  
  
“Draco,” a voice says, and someone catches me. “I’ve got you.”  
  


***

  
  
Potter’s kitchen table isn’t so much a kitchen table. It’s long-ish, old, and looks more like it was meant as a dining table for a grand hall. It can easily seat twelve. But the boards that make up the tabletop are nearly grey from aging and the wash of light. The varnish has nearly disappeared, leaving patches where the wood is most worn. I might have thought it was meant as a picnic table in a park, in another life, but it somehow seems appropriate for my first morning back alive.  
  
There’s no other way to describe it really. I died. I died last night, and this morning I came back. Is this every month from now on? Dying and being reborn? Do I lose a part of myself every time I do? Am I the same me as I was before? Or is this a different Draco? One with blood on his hands and in his mouth. One who could kill.  
  
Maybe I’m the same Draco I’ve always been.  
  
The cup of tea before me steams slightly. It serves more as a smell anchor than anything, anyway. I asked for green. It calms me best. Black tea and white tea either overwhelm or do nothing. Earl Grey and English Breakfast and Jasmine—none of them hit the right notes.  
  
I can still smell the blood beneath my fingernails, despite how many times I washed them. I took a bath and a shower and scrubbed at my nails again and again. Nothing helped. I can still smell it. Even under Potter’s soap. Under the layer of him in which I’ve enveloped myself.  
  
He healed me. Essence of dittany and some deft spellwork. The wounds are closed. Even the scars are fine. Werewolf injuries cannot be healed completely. They always leave scars. I guess I collect them now.  
  
Potter sits in front of me, opposite me, drinking tea and saying little. The silence is almost comfortable, for a time. It gives me space to sort through the images in my mind. I don’t know what’s real, what’s a dream, what’s yesterday. I don’t know anything anymore.  
  
“Will you tell me about it?” he says, as though I’ve been talking this whole time. As though I asked him the questions I ask myself. I look up, and his green eyes pin me in place. Why does he want to know? Why is he doing this? Why did he come get me?  
  
“Just a bad hangover,” I say. My voice is raspy. Potter frowns slightly. “I might as well have been out to the pubs. I can remember about as much as if I had.”  
  
Potter holds his tea. He’s drinking the green too. Maybe he thinks it’ll help us connect or some rubbish. Maybe he was too lazy to make his own. “It will help. To talk about it.”  
  
“Yeah, I feel loads better already,” I say and take a sip of my tea for lack of better things to do. It doesn’t taste as good as it smells, but I don’t need it to.  
  
“I didn’t think it would help either,” he says, and I’m stunned momentarily. “Talking. I thought it was rubbish. Something Hermione’d read about. Nothing that applies to real life.” He gulps his tea. “Until I talked about it. The war. The deaths. Everyone I lost. Everyone I failed.”  
  
I snort, despite myself. Potter doesn’t move. In another life he might have punched me. Or scorned me. Or kicked me out. In another life, when I was a shit, and he was arrogant. When he was an orphan in hand-me-down clothes, and I wasn’t a werewolf. Things change.  
  
“Your trauma is that you weren’t a good enough saviour?” I say, and it sounds scathing even to my ears. Harsh. Full of needles. “My trauma is I’m a monster. I’m a beast and an infection. A diseased dog. I kill people. You let them die. Subtle difference.”  
  
I reach for my cup again, but Potter catches me. His hand grips mine as though I’m sand falling ever through his grasp. His expression flays me. The smell of his soap overwhelms everything for a moment. “You think that makes it easier for me? That I let them die? You haven’t killed anyone, Draco. Some people might be dead because of you. A lot more are dead because of me.” He lets me go, but I can’t pull my hand away. “And I know what it’s like to live with a monster inside you. Voldemort was a part of me. Part of his soul lived in me. For seventeen years. Don’t think you and I are that different.”  
  
“That’s different. I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t—”  
  
“And I did?” he snaps. The words die on my tongue. I breathe in his anger, all hot coals and snake venom. “I asked for my parents murdered and a lifetime of fighting a man desperate to see me dead? I asked for the weight of a world on my shoulders? To have to walk to my death for them? For people who hated me as often as they loved me?”  
  
I say nothing, not knowing how to answer. I’ve always been shit at this. My hands grip the cup as Potter downs his tea. He makes to get up, and then the words tumble out of my mouth.  
  
“It felt like being ripped apart,” I say. “Like being torn to pieces to make room for something else. Something bigger and angry. As though all the pain I’d ever felt only fueled it. It felt like becoming my nightmares. Whenever I think back to dreams I had when I was a child, when I woke up screaming, the monster in the dreams isn’t amorphous, shadowy, unknown. Now it’s me. It’s like having my entire life rewritten to make room for a guest I can’t get rid of. A presence that won’t be dimmed. It rewrote all of me. I can’t even feel or smell or see like myself anymore. There’s no monster living inside me. I’m living inside of it.”  
  
Potter stands unmoving, still as stalk. The paleness in his face, the circles under his eyes are more visible now. The tea is all that’s in him. He smells weak. Almost as weak as I feel.  
  
He moves around the table, comes to my side. I feel him getting closer, his steps nearing me. I feel the heat of him from miles away, but it never meets me. Never quite connects.  
  
“Daddy!” A small voice, high-pitched and squealing, interrupts. I turn to see a small shape blur passed me. Potter’s face splits into a smile, his arms wide, and he catches the whizzing thing. He lifts a small child into his arms and spins him. The boy squeals with laughter, his black hair turning blue and orange and yellow and green.  
  
“Teddy!” Potter says. “Ready for breakfast?” I feel myself shrink down, understanding suddenly. Caught between wanting to run and wanting to disappear, I freeze.  
  
“Yeah! Breakfast!” he cries, and to my terror, notices me. “Hey, who’re you?”  
  
“Teddy,” Potter admonishes.  
  
“My name is Teddy,” he quickly recovers. He smells of cotton and talcum powder and the slightest hint of— “What’s your name?”  
  
I swallow hard. He’s so small, only six I think, and I can’t make myself leave. I glance at Potter, who spares me only a sidelong look and an encouraging brow before turning to make breakfast. Looking back at Teddy, I find his wide, brown eyes. So familiar, so much like my mum’s family. I stifle the feeling, the yearning and loneliness, and paste on a smile.  
  
“My name is Draco,” I say, trying for tired-but-friendly. “I’m—” I glance at Potter again, not knowing if he wants it, but he won’t look back at me. “I’m your cousin.”  
  
And his little eyes twinkle with delight. From one moment to the next, he’s gone from confused and intrigued to fascinated and excited. His eyes shift from brown to silver, and his hair turns blonde. It’s unnerving.  
  
Potter pauses in the corner of my eye, staring straight ahead of him at the wall, as though something has just occurred to him.  
  
“I have a cousin?” he cries, and before anyone can do anything to stop him, he throws his arms around me. Knocked back slightly by his assault, I catch myself and place a hand on his back, patting him gently. He releases me and looks up. “Did you come to play with me?”  
  
I gape, unsure what to say, when a waft of flour and egg and milk and maple syrup meets my nose. There’s a sizzle and a slap. Potter laughs.  
  
“Teddy,” he says, piling a stack of pancakes on a plate. “Draco needs rest right now. You remember we talked about this? Not everyone is always here to play with you.”  
  
Teddy sighs a long-suffering sound and seats himself at the table. “But he  _could_  be here to play with me. And not everyone else is my cousin!”  
  
Potter laughs again, and I’m dizzy with the smells surrounding me. I haven’t really smelled joy before, but Teddy reeks of it. A pang in my stomach grounds me.  
  
“Teddy,” Potter says, his tone indulgent but warning. “You’re going to see Victoire later. You’ll have plenty of time to play there. Draco will be staying with us for a while, so maybe when he’s feeling better, he may agree to play with you. If you ask nicely and behave. Understand?”  
  
With a tilt of his head and an excited smile, Teddy agrees. “Okay.” He turns back to me. “Draco, please, please, please, please will you play with me later when you’re feeling better?” It’s so dramatic, I laugh.  
  
“All right,” I say, but as the word escapes me, Teddy cheers and turns to Potter. As he does, I see it. The cleft on his ear. A long, thin scar runs across it and just nicks the edge of his jaw. A scar that doesn’t disappear with his morphing.  
  
My mouth falls slightly open, my stomach dropping, and Teddy runs off with a stack of pancakes and syrup. The smells on Potter now make perfect sense, but the sight of Teddy’s scarred ear is what roots me to my chair and wipes the smile from my face.  
  
“You’ve no idea what you agreed to,” Potter says with a laugh, dropping a plate of pancakes in front of me. “He’s a little terror. Good kid, though.”  
  
I stare at the pancakes. “Is he why you work for the WSS?”  
  
Potter stops mid-bite. He considers his fork. “That’s part of it.” He resumes eating. The plate of food smells fantastic, but my stomach churns.  
  
“I didn’t think lycanthropy was passed on to children,” I say. Potter nods.  
  
“It isn’t,” he answers, and we both get quiet for a moment. I search out his eyes and find he’s already staring at me. “Just before the first anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, a group of Voldemort sympathisers broke into Andromeda’s home and set a werewolf loose. He killed Andromeda and was about to do the same to Teddy when I managed to take him down.” Potter sets his fork down. His jaw tightens, the muscle clear. He stretches his neck. Anger passes over the surface of his skin and moves on. “They were there to kill him, but only managed to infect him. The one thing Remus was most afraid his son would become—” Everything is frozen, cold, distant. My pain shrinks. My aunt’s lunatic laughter plays in my mind, a sound I’ve never managed to escape. I’d loved her too, though, once. Aunt Bella. My mother never even mentioned Andromeda had died. Potter gets to his feet and lifts his plate, his food half-eaten. “I adopted him. Officially. Left the Auror department and took over WSS. Hermione and I did a lot of work to address the laws around werewolves, but it was only in part for Teddy. It was also for Remus.” He set his plate on the counter. “He never managed to have a full life, because everyone believed werewolves were monsters.”  
  
“We are monsters,” I say before even think of it. It comes out of me, a belief I’ve held my entire life, something living still within me. Potter is at my side, hands on my shoulders, turning me to him. His eyes are intense. He smells of syrup. And something else. Something deeper.  
  
“The first step, with every new werewolf, is to train them out of the lie.” He’s close enough to touch, to breathe. I can smell all of him, though there are no words for it. I want to inhale, to let my eyes flutter shut, to taste him. He smells better, safer, than the green tea long-since cooled. But I don’t. Instead, I let my eyes wander over his lips, his hands still on me, grasping me. I lean in involuntarily and make eye contact again. “You’re no more a monster than I am. And I will make you see it.”  
  
My chest tightens, I can barely breathe now. He’s caught in it too, I can tell. He smells differently when I’m this close. So much more—possible. “You going to save me from myself, Potter?”  
  
He’s almost a hair’s breadth away. Not speaking, now. Whispering. “Yes.”  
  


***

  
  
The spines of the books in Potter’s office are arranged in chromatic order. They follow no other logical organisational pattern I can divine. There are potions texts mixed in with historical books and fiction set next to almanacs and rune translation books. A wizarding law book older than some of the portraits in the Manor stands next to a tome titled  _Gnome Gnashing: A Home Remedy Guide_  for no other reason I can see than they both happen to be purple.  
  
I draw my finger along the spine of the biography of Damocles but stop when something hits me. Fine threads of scent, the hint of aloe and powder and the tiniest dash of oil, come off some of the books. I stand close to the shelf, closing my eyes, and try to sense more clearly. Each fine thread, a smell spun to silk, lifts above the smell of old parchment and worn leather. These scents linger lightly on the surface. They smell of Potter. Some are older, some are new. The strongest is on a book about the magical genetics of metamorphmagi. These are books Potter has touched recently.  
  
Eyes open, I stare in wonder at the bookshelf and the strange map of Potter’s life my senses draw out for me.  
  
“Looking for some light reading?” Potter’s voice startles me slightly, but not really. Not deep in my stomach. I could smell him, I realise, and am only mildly uncomfortable that he found me here. Aloe and powder and pancake batter. He smells of the ocean now, too. Sand and salt water.  
  
“Your library is—eclectic—to say the least,” I say, turning to face him. He doesn’t seem upset to find me in his office alone, uninvited. Maybe I wasn’t. Alone. Or uninvited. “I’m impressed.”  
  
He cocks one eyebrow, a move I don’t think is natural to him. It seems learned, taken from someone else. “Did you not think I’d read anything not Quidditch related?”  
  
I give him a smirk. “I didn’t think you could read.”  
  
Potter laughs, to my surprise, and the sound imprints itself on my mind. A sound, genuine, I’ve heard before but not for me. There’s a slight difference in this one, the laugh he gives me. It isn’t as deep, as quiet as the laugh he gave Teddy. Not as bright and hearty as the laughs he’s shared with his friends in school. It’s lighter, breathy, but from deep in his stomach.  
  
“I see you’ve found your sense of humour,” he says and smiles, and I can’t help but stare at him. Why is he so natural with me? He doesn’t seem to be playing any kind of game, unless he became a better actor since I last knew him. “Good. Come on.”  
  
He nods toward the door, but I don’t move. Some small part of me panics, thinking he means for me to leave now I’ve survived my first full moon. He said the moment he thought I was well enough, he’d let me go. But I’m—  
  
“Want free of me already, Potter?” I say, trying for a drawl. The sound is uneasy to my ears. “Just when I thought we were getting somewhere.”  
  
I don’t know why I said that, or why I lean into him, or why I tilt my head slightly, letting my hair fall into my eyes. I don’t know why I do these things, or why I close the gap between us. And I really don’t know why Potter humours me, why he doesn’t move away, or laugh in my face. I don’t understand why he lets me close, when he knows what I am. All of what I am. Past and present and maybe even future. Instead he lets his eyes rove between my eyes and my mouth and then lower. He looks at the ground and smiles crookedly and tilts his head in return. Just a bit. So slightly. But he tilts opposite me, as if we aren’t talking, but doing something else.  
  
And I can smell him again, stronger than before. I get it in waves. Short and sweet and they make me hungry.  
  
“I thought getting away from me was the goal, Draco?” he asks and steps toward me now. I can’t breathe.  
  
“I hadn’t realised it was as easy as making you laugh,” I say, and I think I’ve lost my mind. The sweet smells begin to evaporate, leaving a spiced, hot scent in its place. That one I can’t name, the one on my tongue and in my throat. It’s Potter still.  
  
“It isn’t,” he says. He’s only inches away, and I think he realises it. He straightens slowly, as though he doesn’t want to seem alarmed, and gestures to the door again. “I have something I’d like to show you.”  
  
Without speaking, I nod and follow him. He leads me down toward the basement. As we approach the stairs, I let the trail of odours guide me, prepare me. Fire and pewter and hot gold. I smell herbs and glass and the sharp scent of poisons. Animals and blood and a thriving, humming magic. By the time we get to the bottom of the stairs, I already know it must be a potions lab.  
  
It looks about as I’d expect. Wooden tables with magically contained fires beneath pewter and gold cauldrons. There are shelves of ingredients, clearly labeled, to one side all along the wall. The other wall is occupied by a desk—cluttered with papers, parchment and open books—and a small, glass-encased set of phials. Even through the glass I can smell what’s in the phials. Blood.  
  
“Taking up a hobby?” I say. “This is quite the set-up for an amateur hobbyist.”  
  
“I was top of the class in sixth year, if you recall,” he says, arms crossed and a look of inexplicable satisfaction on his face. I ignore him, mostly because I’m trying to sort through the sensory assault I’m undergoing. Find one smell, focus. Breathe it in and use it as an anchor. I want to focus on the pewter, the smell of it over the fire, but I can’t. Not with blood in the room. Not when the blood is fresh, kept that way by magic. I can’t even focus on the magic.  
  
The only smell that grounds me is the one that has no name. No name but Potter. The smell I can’t identify, the one that radiates off him. It’s weak, barely there, but confusing and frustrating enough to dispel the pull of the blood.  
  
“I recall you were cheating,” I say, but my heart isn’t in it. I’m too perturbed by the smell to banter with him. Potter apparently senses my discomfort.  
  
“All I used was the text book. Same as you.” I shoot him a look, and he relents with a grin. “Fair enough. I just wanted to show you your work environment.” Another look gains me an explanation. “You mentioned you don’t know where to get Wolfsbane. You don’t get it. You make it. You’re good enough at potions to manage it, aren’t you?”  
  
There’s the slightest hint of a taunt in his words, and I fall for it. “I’m a licensed potions master, Potter. I’d say I’m capable. But—” I don’t know what follows the but. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, why I didn’t make my own potion. It might have to do with the bonfire I had with my potions texts on my birthday. Or maybe with the drunken haze I’ve been living in. But the thought of come back into a lab now, of making potions as though nothing has changed, terrifies me.  
  
“Understanding the potion, working it from scratch, preparing it yourself,” Potter begins, hand on my shoulder, “will help you understand and prepare yourself for the next change. It will give you a sense of control again. Something I think you need.”  
  
I stare at the cauldrons and the ingredients. Potter squeezes my shoulder, and I fight the urge to reach up and take his hand. He lets me go, and I sway slightly, unmoored.  
  
“I’ll leave you alone to start. You can come down here whenever you like while you brew,” he says. As he climbs the stairs back up, I turn and stop him.  
  
“Will you tell me when Teddy gets back?” The words tumble out of my mouth in a heap. I’m not even sure Potter understands them until his face breaks into a smile.  
  
“Really?”  
  
I nod. “I’d like to keep my word. Get to know him a bit.” My neck feels warm, burning, and I clamp down on the rising light in my chest. “It’s not like my friends will be coming to visit, anyway. Having some family around would be nice.”  
  
Potter’s mouth falls slightly open, his brow furrowed. He collects himself quickly and nods. “Sure, yeah. Of course. I’ll call you when he gets back.”  
  
He disappears before either of us can say another word. I turn back to the potions table and take a deep breath. With Potter gone, the only smell that stands out alone is the smell of blood.  
  
“Merlin help me.”  
  


***

  
  
“Daddy, Draco says he’s going to get me my very own broom!” Teddy rushes to Potter as he sets up for dinner. I feel as though I’ve just been through a two-week-long Quidditch match. Playing with Teddy is somehow more exhausting than a full moon.  
  
Potter quirks a brow, offering me a question in a look. I look everywhere but at him. Dinner is roasted chicken and potatoes. I smelled it before he started cooking.  
  
“You remember we decided you needed to be at least eight before you got to ride a broom?” Potter asks.  
  
Teddy waves him off. “Yeah, but you didn’t say I couldn’t  _have_  a broom before then,” he says, and I’m quite certain I see a Slytherin in the making. Potter shoots me a look, and I realize I’m smiling. He shakes his head at me.  
  
“Nice try,” he says, and sets out some chicken and potatoes for Teddy. “No sale.” Teddy huffs and whines, but Potter does not relent.  
  
“I never said I was going to get you a broom now,” I say, trying to placate Potter before he decides to kick me out for infecting Teddy with ideas. “When Ha—when it’s all right for you to have your own broom, you’ll get one.” He seems disappointed, so I add, because I can’t stop myself, “the best one.”  
  
With a squeal of delight, Teddy wolfs down his food and chatters on about which broom he wants, though I’m quite certain there will be new models by the time he turns eight. I’m also certain Potter wants to throttle me, given the looks he’s shooting over the table. Every glance is meaningful, intense, daring. My stomach flips several times. I can’t eat, even though I want to.  
  
“Can I take Draco to play some more, Daddy?” Teddy asks, and I give Potter my best terrified look. I think I might die. He’s going to kill me. Potter laughs, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that sound.  
  
“I think it’s actually almost bed time, don’t you?” Potter asks, and Teddy plays innocent. “Why don’t you go get Kreacher to run you a bath, and I’ll be up soon.”  
  
With only minimal complaining, Teddy runs off, and I’m sitting opposite an expectant Potter. He sits in silence, waiting for me to say something, and I don’t know what to say so—  
  
“Not my fault. He’s very persuasive.” My face is a mask of innocence. Potter’s mouth breaks into a smile bright enough to blot out the sun, and I can breathe him again. Over the scents of everything else, I can smell him.  
  
“World-class Occlumens, and you’ve been hoodwinked by a six-year-old.”  
  
“Very persuasive,” I repeat, feeling the laughter bubble in my chest.  
  
Potter runs his tongue along the edge of his upper teeth, sucking on the canine. I follow it, my throat dry. The smell of him is stronger now. So strong I can almost taste him. Nothing else exists beyond that. I can’t smell the chicken or the spices or the fire in the oven. I can’t smell the dust in the wallpaper or the leather-bound books or even the talcum powder smell that follows Teddy around. I can only smell Potter. Not soap or sweat or lotion or the wool of his robes. Not the cotton of his shirt. Only that smell, that is him underneath it.  
  
And the grip it has on me scares me.  
  
“You’re very good with him,” Potter says, gathering up the plates. “Is it strange at all, knowing he’s your cousin?”  
  
I swallow hard and play with my nails. “I thought it would be, but it isn’t. He reminds me a bit of myself when I was that young. And sometimes his eyes—well they look like my mum’s side. She always talked about how she looked forward to when I’d have children of my own.” My throat closes, my chest tight. It’s not an option anymore, and Mother isn’t here to ask for them. “But that’s another life, now.”  
  
“Is it?” Potter asks. He’s next to me again, sitting so close. How did I not hear him move? My senses are so sharp but so useless sometimes. “You could still do it.”  
  
“No,” I say quickly. “No. That’s not—no.” It’s quiet, a pregnant silence, and I break it with a forced laugh. It sounds hollow. “Who would have me now, anyway? I’m better off alone.”  
  
“I knew someone else who thought that way,” Potter says. “And if he’d kept to that, I wouldn’t have Teddy.”  
  
When I look at him, his eyes are already on me, delving into me. I inhale sharply, surprised, but only get overwhelmed with the smell of him again. He permeates my skin. “Right, well, yes.” I search for words. “So why haven’t you? Had some little monsters of your own.”  
  
Potter’s eyebrows knit together. “I do,” he says. “I have Teddy.”  
  
“You know what I mean, Potter,” I say, torn between wanting to pull away and breathe, and get closer and inhale.  
  
“Not exactly,” he answers. Great. Infuriating as ever, I see.  
  
“Playing thick, are we?” I ask, and Potter feigns innocence. “You aren’t still with the Weasley girl. I know that from the  _Prophet_. But you aren’t interested in adding to your litter?” Once, those words might have seemed scathing, but I guess being a dog means I get to talk like one now. Potter rolls his eyes.  
  
“Who’ll have me? A werewolf sympathizer with a werewolf child,” he says, and I suppose it sounds ridiculous to my ears too, though I don’t think it should. “I’m better off alone.”  
  
“You’re mocking me,” I whisper, and Potter is almost touching me. The magic on the air shifts, sizzles, sparkles in my senses. “You’ve got your friends at least. Mine have taken to acting as though I died.”  
  
My hand is on his wrist, my thumb playing on the tender underside. I can feel the race of his heartbeat, the rush of his blood. He leans into me, and I lean into him. I don’t even notice the closeness until he pulls back. He looks confused.  
  
“Draco,” he says, voice husky. “What do you remember of the night you were attacked?”  
  
I stop, pull back, the moment shattered. The flashes from the full moon come back to me in fragments. A stained glass window of colour and feeling. I don’t know how to piece it together.  
  
“Not much,” I say. “Just bits and pieces. I hear screaming, something falling into mud, something big, and then a wolf. I can hear it breathing, growling, and—” I cut off, wincing under the memory. “And pain.”  
  
Potter studies me. The clock on the wall ticks, and I don’t know what he’s after. “Do you remember where you were? What you were doing, before the attack? Did they tell you who it was that attacked you?”  
  
That gets my attention. I straighten, body vibrating with focused energy. “No. Who was it? What happened?”  
  
Potter’s expression changes. A shadow crosses his face, and he takes a deep breath. “You were out, that night. The report said you were drinking at a club with—with Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini.” This doesn’t really surprise me. We used to do that often, before they decided they couldn’t be seen with me. “It was on the edge of town near Parkinson’s family home. The three of you headed back toward there when—a werewolf crossed your path.” Everything goes cold, icy. Nothing moves, and every particle of my being is focused on Potter. “You were all drunk. Not well enough to Apparate or fight it off.”  
  
My limbs are made of lead. Heavy and useless. I’m frozen. “Pansy and Blaise…”  
  
Potter’s expression is pinched, pained. “They didn’t survive.”  
  
All the breath leaves me, and the scattered fragments of memories fall into place. Laughing and walking with Pansy and Blaise. I can feel them near me, saying something scathing and sarcastic and appropriate. Then Blaise yells something, and I’m running. I’m stumbling through the mud, and there’s screaming. Pansy. It’s Pansy screaming like she’s seen a ghost. Or becoming one. Blaise cries out. Then I fall, there’s a thud, and a growling. Jagged teeth and the full moon. Then nothing.  
  
I can barely manage to form words, the memories taking shape in my head. “And the werewolf…”  
  
I don’t know what I want to hear. That it was some of Greyback’s cronies or apprentices. That it was meant as payback for the part I played in the war, in bringing Voldemort to power or in taking him down. That it was punishment for not suffering a worse fate after my trials. For not being sent to Azkaban. I don’t know what I want, but it isn’t—  
  
“She was just a girl,” he says. “It was an accident. Her wolfsbane wasn’t properly brewed. The potions master responsible is in custody. She’s on the Registry, now. At St Mungo’s. She’s—not doing well. Learning what she did…they don’t know if she’ll recover. I know it doesn’t make it any better—”  
  
“No,” I say, world crumbling inside me, “it makes it worse.”  
  


***

  
  
I wake to a howling. Low and mournful, soft like a lullaby, it chills me to the core. I’m holding my breath, unable to make myself breathe. The darkness encroaches, lives within me. It’s everywhere and nowhere. I think the howling is in me, waking me nightly to remind me. As if I could forget.  
  
I don’t know which wolf I’m hearing, imagining, remembering. I don’t know which wolf I’m more afraid of, which I hate more. The one who made me, or the one I’ve become.  
  
Cold sweat on my forehead, down my neck, and I’m shaking myself out of bed. Water will help. Water and wolfsbane. Trembling, I start down the hall, hand on the wall to guide my way. The wallpaper is thick, textured with fine lines and grooves painting an invisible picture. Dust settles in the grooves from the years. I can smell it. And something else.  
  
Snuffling breath, fur, and the heat of a warm body. Eyes light in the darkness, stopping me dead. I’m frozen, facing my nightmare, and it stares back unmoving.  
  
The wolf in the hall, black as the shadows, feels like it’s come out of my mind fully formed. For a long while we stand, staring each other down, and I want to scream. My throat is tight, constricted, refusing to give way to the scream rocketing up from my stomach. My mind races, tells me to reach for my wand, to curse the thing, to call for help, to Apparate away, to get Teddy and Potter and escape.  
  
But the eyes staring back don’t seem right. And through the shadows of terror in my mind, it comes to me. The wolf’s eyes are green. Once I see the green, I see the scar. Drawn jaggedly across from one eye over its muzzle—a lightning bolt.  
  
The wolf takes a step toward me and shifts back into the shape of Potter. Hands out, as if I might fall over, he tries to talk me off an invisible ledge.  
  
“Draco,” he whispers, “are you all right? Did I frighten you? I should’ve told you—”  
  
“You’re an Animagus,” I say, mostly to centre myself on the thought. He’s not a werewolf, not a real wolf. He’s not a danger. Not a monster. Just masquerades as one.  
  
“I had to be,” he says, and ushers me down the hall, away from Teddy’s bedroom. “I’d wanted to for a while, had all the magic in place, but—when Teddy was turned, I sped up the process. I knew he’d need help through his transformations. A child can’t go through those alone, even with Wolfsbane. It’s too much to understand. And he’d need someone to help him who couldn’t be affected by his bite, in case he threw a tantrum or something.”  
  
I nod along, not sure how I feel. But what does it really matter how I feel? Potter turned into a wolf to help Teddy. Not for me or because of me. It has nothing to do with me at all. Why would it? Why should it ever?  
  
“And you’re a wolf,” I say, still stating the obvious in a vain attempt to soothe myself. Reality has never been particularly soothing, though. Not sure why I think it might be now. “Convenient.”  
  
Potter shrugs and gestures for me to take a seat in his office. I move past him and inhale. He doesn’t smell the same, just after a transformation. He smells more—feral.  
  
“Not really,” he says, and pours out two fingers of firewhisky for both of us. I take the glass without hesitation and down it. The burn in my throat kills the fear that strangled it earlier. Potter sips his. “Turns out your choices and personality have a strong influence on what animal you become. It’s not like a Patronus. It doesn’t take shape based on your happy memories. It takes shape based on your needs. I needed an animal appropriate for helping Teddy. A wolf was the obvious best option. He wasn’t confused by the sight of me those first few times.”  
  
I’m holding the empty glass as though it’s still full. I stare at the remaining drops of firewhisky and long for more, but the stronger part of me refuses to ask. It’s done nothing helpful for me yet, alcohol.  
  
“So you spend the full moons transformed and at Teddy’s side,” I say, thinking of my parents, my loving, protective parents, far away somewhere. Somewhere I can’t know. “And tonight? Have you taken up howling as a performance art?”  
  
Potter finishes his drink and sets the glass aside. Guess that strikes out the option of more.  
  
“Teddy gets nightmares sometimes,” he explains. “Only the howling seems to calm him enough to sleep. I’m sorry if I woke you. We’re not terribly accustomed to having guests.”  
  
“I was under the impression I was a prisoner,” I say and immediately regret it. My nerves are raw. My mind races with the howling and the memories I can’t push away anymore. Potter flinches only slightly. His jaw is tight.  
  
“You’re—” but he doesn’t seem to know what to say. “You’re here because you need to be. And because I need you to be.”  
  
I look up at him, through the hair that’s fallen into my face, too long and untidy. I meant to get it cut just before my birthday. My throat is tight again, my heart beating a hesitant rhythm. No one needs me.  
  
“You need to save me,” I say, reminding myself Potter is a Gryffindor. Once a saviour, always a saviour. He might have a problem.  
  
“I need you to help me save others,” he says, and I’m more confused than surprised. Perhaps he’s had a bit more firewhisky than I have. Perhaps spending time as a wolf has addled his mind. Some wizards become animagi and forget to transform back. But he sees the incredulity on my face, I suppose, because he says, “Come with me.”  
  
He takes me back down to the potions lab, but instead of lingering by the brewing wolfsbane potion, or the ingredients on the wall, or the shelf of books, he strides directly toward the glass-enclosed set of phials. The blood.  
  
Opening the glass case, he pulls out one of the phials and hands it to me. For one alarming moment, I’m convinced he wants me to drink it. But as I push aside the idiocy of my fear, I take a deep breath. The blood smells of blood. As usual, iron, salt and sugar. But, other things, too. It smells of pine and hot embers and a clear, dark night. It smells of falling stars, new grass, and wind in the sails as Durmstrang’s ship rose out of the lake. It smells of fresh-poured butterbeer and Hogsmeade on a cool October morning. It smells of magic.  
  
I turn the phial slightly, watch the iridescent shimmer in the liquid. Not just the usual red, the blood is green and silver and blue and purple. It’s radiant with colours that make no sense. The label on the phial reads “Teddy — age 4.”  
  
“What have you done to it?” I ask. Potter has some peculiar hobbies.  
  
“Nothing,” he says, his grin wide and full of possibilities. “That’s just his blood. Untouched. Unchanged.”  
  
I look through the other phials, each labeled with an age. The oldest is from when he was only two. But the blood in the phial smells fresh, as fresh as the one marked “age 6.” And they each smell slightly different. So much magic in his blood, so much potential and opportunity. Even the smell of the moon—the werewolf in him—changes slightly in every phial.  
  
“You’ve been taking his blood for years,” I say, and Potter takes it as a criticism. Some kind of condemnation.  
  
“Small amounts,” he says, and the defensiveness is rather endearing. “And only once I noticed. He got a nosebleed one day, and as I helped him stop it, I noticed the blood on the tissues wasn’t drying, and it was turning strange colours.  
  
“He’s a metamorphmagus,” I say, as though this is normal, but I’ve never read much about them. I don’t know if it’s normal.  
  
“Yes,” he says, the glint of hope still present in his eyes. He doesn’t look like a wolf now. More like an eager puppy. “But he’s also a werewolf.” He takes the phial from me and sets it back in the case but doesn’t close it. “The two things should have been in conflict, from everything I’ve read. Hermione thought that one might cancel the other out. Since lycanthropy has no known cure, we thought his being turned might take away his genetic gift.” Potter releases a sigh so quiet I’m sure I was never meant to hear it. “We were wrong. Instead of fighting, the two conditions actually work together.”  
  
The wolfsbane potion in the background bubbles softly. The fire beneath it sears the bottom of the cauldron. The smell is reassuring, a quiet moment in a storm. But my heart is racing still. Every inch of me buzzes, hums with the need to move. To do something. A chance arises. I can feel it. The chance at something.  
  
“What do you mean, ‘work together’?” I ask, trying to hide the sudden energy, but Potter doesn’t notice. He’s nearly thrumming with it himself. I can see it in his face, feel it in the subtle shift in scents.  
  
“Teddy doesn’t take wolfsbane,” Potter admits. “He doesn’t need to. When the full moon comes, he transforms into a werewolf, but it isn’t like any transformation I’ve ever seen.” I want to run, want to leave him now. I need to get out of the basement, out of that house. I need to not hear him tell me what he’s telling me. My chest hurts. I press my hands to the tabletop, feel the grain of the wood deep in my skin. I focus on the wood, the smell of it, the feel. The table is real. The table will not disintegrate under scrutiny. “He’s in no pain. It doesn’t hurt at all. And when he becomes a wolf, he’s  _still Teddy_. He doesn’t forget who he is.”  
  
I grip the table’s edge. The buzzing in me grows louder. I can barely hear Potter, but I can smell him. I breathe in the thrill on the air, the hope. I breathe in his intoxicating smell. “H-how is that possible?”  
  
“I’ve searched the records, every text and document that even vaguely references werewolves and known victims,” he says, and he begins pacing. “Not a single reference, before Teddy, marks a metamorphmagus being turned. Not a single one. There are no hybrids, no mixes. The only cases of werewolf attacks including metamorphmagi ended with their deaths. No survivors. Not until now.”  
  
I want to sit. I need to sit. My knees feel like they’re going to give out. The world buckles beneath the weight of me. Or maybe the other way around.  
  
“So what?”  
  
Potter gives me a sharp look, a look of shocked disappointment. How could I not see? That’s what his look says. But I can’t let myself.  
  
“Draco,” he says, “if I can figure out what it is in Teddy’s blood that makes his transformations smooth and lets him keep his mind, we could find a permanent alternative to the wolfsbane potion. A way to make werewolves safer for themselves and their loved ones. And a way to definitively separate out dangerous offenders from innocents.” He drops his hands and exhales heavily, a sound limitless in hope. “Draco, this could change everything for a lot of people. It could change everything for you.”  
  
_Everything has already changed._  
  
But I don’t say that. Because I can’t. I don’t want to hold on to his hope, to let myself believe it. If I let it spark inside me, what happens when it dies? What happens when his plan fails? Because nothing I touch ever works out.  
  
“What does this have to do with me?” I ask, breathless and trying not to let his infectious excitement get to me. I can tell he told me to make me smile. He told me to make me happy, to give me hope. Potter doesn’t realize that hope might kill me, but it’s already too late.  
  
“I’ve been trying to separate out the magical components, but—” Potter hesitates, studies me, and says, “of all the people who know anything about blood magic, you’re the only one skilled enough to help me. And you’re the only one I trust with Teddy’s blood.”  
  
I push off the table, move toward him, crowd into him, all the while keeping his gaze. He moves opposite me, like a counterweight, and his lips part slightly as he looks into my eyes. The smell of him is off. Just slightly. Everything leaves a mark.  
  
“You’re lying, Potter,” I say. His expression remains the same. “That’s not the only reason.” Again, nothing. But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t push me away, and I can feel the heat of him through the thin cotton of my pajamas. It’s cold in the basement, but Potter feels like the fire under the cauldron. “You need me because I’m the best chance at a guinea pig you’ve got. Teddy and I are of the same blood. If you’re ever going to test this theory of yours on anyone, it’s got to be me.”  
  
Potter’s lips close. He swallows slowly, eyes still on mine. “Yes.”  
  
And the thought occurs to me, sprouting from the root of all the darkness in my life. I ask it before I lose my nerve, because I need to know. I need to know if it was ever possible.  
  
“Did you set the werewolf on me and my friends?”  
  
And the strike of alarm in Potter’s eyes is real. Eyebrows knitted together, the corners of his lips downturned, the smell of him shifting to sharp, spice and acid.  
  
“No,” he says, and he seems determined to answer me as calmly as possible. Maybe he thinks emotional responses would seem suspicious. Maybe he thinks I’m broken and the only way to fix me is to indulge my paranoia. To answer my stupid questions seriously. “Do you really think I would ever do that? After Teddy?”  
  
I’m touching him now. Just barely. A whisper’s contact. He doesn’t move or push me. He doesn’t get angry.  
  
“For Teddy,” I say. His expression is set. Hard. More closed than before, but still open in cracks.  
  
“I’m not a monster,” he says, and I can’t help myself.  
  
“I am,” I say, and pull him into a kiss. His lips part for me, his mouth hot and wet and tasting of him. He tastes exactly as he smells, except with more depth. More Potter.  
  
I kiss him roughly, hungrily, the blood rushing through me and him. His hands are on me, gripping my arms in a confused effort caught between pushing and pulling.  
  
And I pull away. I stop breathing. I can’t breathe or smell or taste anything but him. He’s everywhere in me, on me. I step back because I have to, not because I mean to. I’m unsteady, the world sliding sideways.  
  
“I’ll be your lab rat, Potter,” I say, hand to my mouth. I leave him there. My head is pounding. My heart pounds harder. “I’ll be whatever you want.”  
  


***

  
  
The stairs creak as I reach the main floor. I close the door to the basement, rubbing my brow with one hand. The clock on the wall tells me, with its incessant ticking, I’ve been in the basement for six hours working on separating out the magic in Teddy’s blood. Throat parched, stomach grumbling, and my head clearer than it’s been for days, I feel almost human again.  
  
A glint on the ring my parents gave me reminds me why. The moonstone is black. The new moon.  
  
I’m stopped in my tracks by a smell. Only a whiff and my entire body alights. Back to the wall, hands running over the wood, the wallpaper, searching for a feeling good enough to quell the urge. Potter is home.  
  
Peeling myself off the wall, I take several deep breaths, counting out the beats in my head. I need to focus. Before I do something I’ll regret. Something else, anyway.  
  
I mean to go for the kitchen but walk to Potter’s office instead. I knock on the doorframe, the door is ajar, and step in without even thinking. Nothing exists but the scent of him. Spicy, warm and tasting of dark chocolate and tea and hot breath on cool skin.  
  
“—take him this time. It’s fine, Harry, don’t worry.” Granger is standing, one foot in the floo, talking to Potter about something. Breath is heavy in my chest. Everything intensifies being in the room with him. I can’t even smell Granger at all. I know she should smell—of lavender, vanilla and tea stains on parchment and mint lip balm and melted wax—but I can’t smell her at all. She notices me first.  
  
“Hello, Draco.”  
  
I nod to her, trying not to focus on Potter. He turns at her word. His eyes meet mine despite my efforts.  
  
“Granger,” I say, refusing to give him my full attention. She glances between Potter and I.  
  
“It’s Weasley now,” she says, and I lean against the doorframe.  
  
“Yes, but that may get confusing, given that their numbers continue to grow.” Granger almost looks amused. What is the world coming to?  
  
Potter only looks at me. His expression is intense, unreadable. I wonder what I look like to him. What do I smell like?  
  
“Well, if it’s that difficult for you, you could always call me Hermione,” she says, and the thought alarms me. I don’t have a chance to answer her, one way or another, because she adds, “Glad to see you’re feeling better, Draco. I’ll let you know how it goes, Harry.” And she disappears into the Floo. I don’t even notice where she goes.  
  
Potter licks his lips, sitting on the edge of his desk, and looks me up and down.  
  
“Making arrangements?” I ask, tilting my head back. Potter’s eyes follow the line of my neck. The smell of him intensifies. Even the clothes on my body feel rough, too hot, too much. I want desperately to tear them off. Or have someone else do it.  
  
“For Teddy,” he says. He doesn’t move. Neither do I. We’re stuck in amber. “For the full moon.”  
  
Lips parted, I breathe in hoping for clarity, but instead I get more haze. More of the thick cloud of Potter in my head. I start toward him now, the scent dragging me on.  
  
“Isn’t that dangerous for them? And for him?” I ask, stalking closer. Potter doesn’t move. Just watches me.  
  
“Ron and Hermione are both animagi,” he says. “Ron and George decided to do it as an experiment for a product they’re working on. I think Hermione just wanted the challenge. Teddy knows them. They’ve stayed with us before during the full moon in case something like this ever happened.”  
  
His legs are spread slightly, his hands clutching the desk to either side of him. I’m standing between his legs, close enough to see the way the fabric pulls over his skin, to see everything I want to see. But more than that, I want to smell him. I want to taste his skin, breathe in the crook of his neck, and the soft skin behind his ear. I want to bury myself in him.  
  
“Something like this?” I ask. “What’s happened?”  
  
Potter has to angle his head up to keep eye contact. It leaves his neck taut, vulnerable and open. I lick my lips. He could stand. He doesn’t.  
  
“You offered to test my theory,” he breathes. I lean toward him. His breath ghosts over me. I inhale sharply. “I need to be there to collect data.”  
  
My hands are on his hands, pinning them to the desk. His touch sends shivers through me, rocking through my body. We draw parallel lines, the space between them closing steadily.  
  
“You want to see me transform.” It’s not a question. I’m not asking anymore. “You want to meet the other me.”  
  
Potter’s lips brush mine, but I only breathe him. He’s frozen in place, inviting but unyielding. “Yes.”  
  
“You want the wolf,” I say. Our eyes meet again. The look in them is familiar. The smell rolling off Potter, off me, is not. The smell of want and need and unsatisfied hunger. Together, we smell like release. “Want him to smell you, to taste you, to devour you.”  
  
He moves finally. The barest gesture, and our lips touch again. Intentional. Striking. Momentary. “I want you, Draco.”  
  
Our mouths collide, and I push him down on the desk, his back flat to the top. I’m atop him, hips grinding into his. He’s hard and straining, and he bucks against me. I moan from the feel of his erection pressing to mine. One hand flat to his chest, pinning him, I yank down his trousers and pants. I’ve no time, no patience. The hunger takes over me.  
  
I can smell the rush of blood to his cock. The heady, mouth-watering scent of Potter and how badly he needs me. How badly he wants me. I want to kiss him again. I want to taste him and devour him, like he wants. But I need to taste all of him. I tear open his shirt, expose the smooth skin, glistening beneath. My mouth is on him, licking and sucking. I rake my teeth over his skin, pulling it into my mouth to taste. Potter pants and moans, his hands in my hair.  
  
I make my way down, leaving a trail of raw red marks all along his chest and stomach. He arches as I move, and his cock bumps along my neck, my jaw. I grasp it tightly, stroke with one hand, pushing his clothing off him with the other. He spreads his legs wider for me, his every move demanding more. His cock pulses under my touch, the tip leaking a tiny bead of clear liquid. I press the tip of my tongue to it, sliding against the slit and the head, swirling around beneath it. The taste of him is teeming with magic. The sharp energy of the chase for the snitch, the whip of wind through fabric, the anticipation of a first kiss, the gasp before a fall, the lightening in the stomach from a cheering charm. He tastes of fresh-baked pastries and laughing with friends and the bittersweet feeling of the Hogwarts Express leaving Hogsmeade.  
  
I pull his cock into my mouth, taking it to the root and drawing thick, wet lines with my tongue. Potter cries out, groans, and grasps for my hair and the desk. He arches into my movements, and I want him to come for me, want to taste more. I suck to the tip, swirling my tongue around the head, and pull out my wand to prepare him. I need all of him.  
  
“Fuck, Draco, I’m—” Two fingers inside him, his cock filling my mouth, he tenses. His body tense, muscles pulling, Potter comes. He spills onto my tongue, flooding me with the taste of him, the smell, the indescribable essence of him.  
  
I swallow and release his cock, my lips burning. He looks up at me as I slide my fingers in again and again, adding another. He drops his head on the desk with a thud, panting and moaning still.  
  
“I want you on your knees,” I tell him, and Potter pulls himself off the desk and kneels in front of me. One hand around his back, sliding down his arse and pushing inside, I press against him. His hands on my neck, my jaw, he pulls me into a kiss. Slow and wanting, he tastes me too. The breath in me deserts me. I can’t inhale anything but him, and I can’t wait.  
  
Turning him around, I press the head of my cock to his arse and push inside. I move in quickly, roughly. Potter moans, hands on the desk to support himself. I thrust in hard, deep, and he pushes back. Again and again.  
  
“Fuck me, Draco, deeper,” he says, and I do. I push into him without holding back and shut my eyes. My nails dig into his skin, grasping his hips. I bite at his shoulder, his back, his neck, and taste him as I fuck him. I want to bite him harder, want to break the skin but I don’t. I catch myself, catch the animal, and rake my teeth over his shoulder instead. He thrusts back in arcs, and I lose myself.  
  
I cry out. I don’t know what, and bury myself deep inside him. Vision gone, my body on fire and everything rushing out of me, all I can hold onto is the smell of him, the feel of him around me. He cries out in weak gasps, one hand around us, on my back, holding me in place.  
  
Finished, I breathe out and collapse against him. Desperate for air, for clarity, for the warmth of him that lives beyond the wanting, I rest my head against his shoulder. Pressing my lips to his scorched skin, I savour Potter’s every detail. A laugh erupts in him, slow and deep, and shakes him. My brain screams to pull away, but I can’t.  
  
“I told you the new moon would make you behave strangely,” he says, and relief washes my tingling skin like a damp cloth. I lift my head to look at him, and Potter turns to me. Leaning over his shoulder, I press my lips to his. He lets me.  
  
“What’s your excuse?”  
  


***

  
  
The spell sparks for the sixteenth time, showering tiny fragments of hot magic into my eyes. Eyelids shut, I cry out and drop the phial I was levitating. There’s a tinkling crash, and the smell of blood-soaked stone waft upward.  
  
“Fuck,” I snap, wiping at my eyes with the back of my sleeve and blinking at the ground. The clock on the wall tells me I’ve been down in the basement lab for thirteen hours straight; the ring on my finger tells me I’m running out of time. The moonstone has reached the waxing gibbous phase. Only days until the next full moon. Only days until the next time I die, if I don’t figure out how to use Teddy’s blood to keep control of myself.  
  
I breathe deep, long, slow. Counting out the beats. Trying to impose a calm on my chaotic feelings. The wolfsbane potion behind me has stopped brewing. It’s bottled and set in neat rows along the wall. Enough potion to get through half a year’s worth of full moons. Perfectly brewed. Perfectly functional.  
  
And I can’t take it. I can’t take even a drop if I want to help Potter decipher a permanent treatment for lycanthropy.  
  
The bottles glint in the low floating lights I conjured. Soft white balls, the same intensity as a regular  _Lumos_ , linger above my head like a grossly misplaced halo, but they don’t make seeing a solution any easier.  
  
The blood in the open case reeks of life and meat, and my stomach grumbles and churns. I need to get out of here. I need to eat something.  
  
I climb the creaky wooden stairs, well-worn by my footsteps, and open the door to the main floor. The moment I’m over the threshold I hear a scream, and something heavy launches itself at my knees.  
  
“Draco!” Teddy squeals, hugging me tightly enough to throw me off balance. I grasp wildly for the doorframe to stop us both tumbling down the stairs. “Guess what?”  
  
Trying to recapture the breath I lost from his attack, I shuffle us both out of harm’s way and into the hall proper. Closing the door behind me, I glance down at Teddy. His hair is a strange mess of red and blonde, having just come from Shell Cottage. He smells of seawater and broken shells. The freckles on his nose slowly disappear as he looks up at me. His big brown eyes shift too, lightening to a green almost perfectly matched to Potter’s. His hair turns to black, and I’m out of breath, again.  
  
“What?” I say, barely able to form words. His grin splits his face, nothing but joy and teeth.  
  
“Daddy says I get to have a sleepover with Auntie ’Mione and Uncle Ron!” Like a pixie with a wand, Teddy looks as though he’s been waiting all his life to sleep in a bed not his own.  
  
“Is that so?” I ask, smiling because I don’t think it’s possible not to. I gather him up into my arms, tossing him up and down as I walk him to the kitchen. He laughs and giggles and swats at my face.  
  
“Silly, Draco!” he says when I put him down. “Have you ever had a sleepover?”  
  
I laugh, searching around for something to eat. My stomach tells me to call Lottie for help, but I’m not sure I can yet.  
  
“What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?” I ask, finding some biscuits in the cupboard. I consider them a moment. “I’m sleeping over here.”  
  
Teddy snorts a laugh and pushes his head against the back of my legs, bracing himself against them. I sway back and forth slightly, and he giggles more.  
  
“No, silly, you live here now,” he says.  
  
Heart in my throat, biscuits forgotten, I swallow hard. “Oh, right.” A cough, clearing my throat, pushing away thoughts I’ve no room for. “So when is this fable sleepover then?”  
  
“Daddy says when Auntie ’Mione and Uncle Ron come for his birthday, I get to go home with them after,” he says, and I nod along as though this makes perfect sense. Until his words settle.  
  
“His—birthday?”  
  
“Are you trying to sneak snacks before dinner again?” Potter’s admonishing voice comes from the doorway. Teddy plays innocent and runs toward him, leaving me holding a box of biscuits and staring at my ring.  _Birthday._  
  
“I was telling Draco about my sleepover!” Potter laughs and shakes his head, but everything around me feels brittle. I drop the biscuits without thinking, hunger forgotten. Potter smells of soap and hot water and newly laundered towels. And under that—he smells of Potter.  
  
“Go wash up for dinner, yeah?” he says to Teddy, and the boy runs off up the stairs. “You all right?”  
  
He’s talking to me now, but I can barely hear him. Only Teddy’s words replay in my head again and again. Suddenly Potter is behind me, his hands smoothing down my arms, his chest nearly pressed to my back. He breathes me.  
  
“It’s your birthday,” I say, distant. “The full moon is your birthday.”  
  
Potter pulls away to peer around me. “Yeah,” he says, plucking a biscuit from the box. Butter and sugar. Slightly stale.  
  
I turn to him, searching his face. He seems confused. “How could you not tell me?”  
  
He looks sheepish, munching on the biscuit. “Yeah, I probably should’ve warned you about the dinner, but I didn’t want you to worry. The Weasleys have all moved on from the war. It’ll be fine.”  
  
I stand frozen a moment, caught between sheer terror at not having even considered the entire set of Weasleys gathered at once, and the absurdity of Potter not realizing the greater issue. Pushing aside the less urgent Weasley issue, I step back to gain some focus.  
  
“Are you daft?” I ask, and he shoots me a half-confused look. “Your birthday is the full moon. You mean to spend that with me testing the wolfsbane alternative we have yet to actually distill. Or had you forgotten?”  
  
Potter swallows, leaning against the counter. I step back again, trying to breathe air that isn’t laced with him. But he’s everywhere. Even on days when my senses are weaker, he’s all I can smell when he’s in the room.  
  
“Obviously not,” he says. “Dinner first, before sundown. Then testing. It’ll be fine, Draco. They understand it has to be an early night.”  
  
I shut my eyes, willing away his obtuseness. When I open my eyes, he’s munching on another biscuit, and I want to simultaneously kick him and kiss him.  
  
“Potter,” I snap, and he looks up, more concerned than before. “We don’t even know if this will work. We haven’t distilled a potion or serum of any kind from what I’ve managed to pull from Teddy’s blood. And short of just injecting me with his blood as is, we have no real alternative. I can’t even take a Wolfsbane potion if it doesn’t work, because we won’t know whether or not your theory is effective until  _after_  I’ve transformed.”  
  
Potter’s expression changes, and I can’t read this one. Not right now. “I know that, Draco. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth it, no? If there’s a chance you’ll never have to worry about brewing Wolfsbane again?”  
  
My throat closes, my chest tight. I grip the counter behind me to stop the shaking. “But wh—” I can barely get the words out, strangled in my throat. My tongue won’t work around them. Even the thought scrambles through my mind, my every instinct telling me to tamp it down, to lock it away. “What if,” I push out, breathing slowly, “it doesn’t work, and you’re stuck with—the wolf?”  
  
Potter looks up, his lips parted. He searches my face, but I turn away. I can’t look at him and breathe him now.  
  
“Draco, it’s all right,” he says and reaches for me, but I pull away, shove him off, and back down the kitchen.  
  
“It isn’t!” I cry. “You don’t know what I’m capable of! You don’t know what I could do to you! You’ve only spent time with Teddy, and he never forgets! He doesn’t lose himself! But I—”  
  
Potter follows after me, taking a step forward for every one I step back.  
  
“I can handle myself ,” he says, overly confident, as usual. “You aren’t going to hurt me.”  
  
“I killed my friends!” The words rocket out of my mouth like a Bludger released from a trunk. They meet the air too quickly for me to stop it, too quickly for me to close the box in my mind where I locked away the thoughts of Pansy and Blaise. I haven’t opened it and never planned to. But here they are—the hurricane of emotions I never wanted to meet.  
  
Potter grabs my arms, pulls me to him. His grip is tight, painful, but I struggle back. “Draco! You didn’t kill Parkinson and Zabini.”  
  
“I did,” I say, a savage tone erupting from me. Potter’s jaw is clenched, his eyes trained on my face. “That girl in St Mungo’s—the same wolf that lives in her lives in me. Pansy and Blaise,” I say, terror loosening my tongue, “they were strong, talented. They were fast and clever and—”  
  
“And drunk,” Potter says. “Too drunk to react quickly, too drunk to Apparate away. They were too drunk to fight, and so were you. It’s not your fault!”  
  
“It’ll be your birthday, Potter,” I say and wrench my arms from him. He releases me with a shock, staring, angry.  
  
“Then I won’t drink,” he says. “I won’t have a drop, if it calms you down.”  
  
“I can’t kill you, Potter,” I cry. Hands on the table, I stare at the knotted wood, the years of family sitting to eat here. I stare at the place my mother might have sat, once. I stare at the empty seats where her family sat. In another world. There are hands on my back, on my arms again. Potter’s smell takes over, the thoughts, the memories, and I exhale. “What are we doing?”  
  
Potter runs his hands up and down my arms, and I turn to him, breaking contact again, but I can still smell him. I think it’s coming from me now. He’s in me everywhere.  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
“Why do you care at all? About me? Why me?” I feel weak, empty. As though the hurricane played out, wrung out, and left me with the wreckage. “You hate me.”  
  
Potter is so quiet when he answers, I might have thought he left. But I can still feel him. The smell of him, the warmth of his body, the sway of his robes on the air. I can feel him. “I don’t hate you. I—I don’t—I care about all my clients.”  
  
I nod. “Like this?” I ask, and he stands with his mouth open and no words. I straighten, step toward him, touch his face. Fingertips along his jaw, I move closer, breathing him in again. My heart races. “Do you care about all your clients like this?”  
  
He tilts his head back, into my touch, breathing me too. Maybe he can smell me, like I smell him. I doubt it.  
  
“No,” he answers after a while.  
  
“Then why?” I’m standing against him now, pressing him to the wall again. I lean down, suck his lip into my teeth, kiss him hard. When I pull away, he’s ruffled, glaring. “Why me, Potter?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he says, and I don’t know what I expected. I step back, and he reaches up and pulls me against him. “But I want to find out.” He pauses, lets his eyes rove over me, and adds, “so why me, then?”  
  
My hands are on his waist, running up and down. I want to feel him again. Closer. Naked. Full. “The smell of you,” I say, and he cocks his head to the side. “I can smell everything, in stark detail, all the time. It’s maddening. But you, you drown everything else out. It won’t leave me.”  
  
Potter drags me down into a kiss—slow, hot, angry. I can taste the biscuits and the determination and the anger. He breaks the kiss and looks me in the eyes.  
  
“No, I won’t.”  
  


***

  
  
I stand in front of the mirror in my room. It didn’t take long for me to think of it that way—my room. I know it isn’t. Not really. I don’t belong here. But I’m not sure I belong at the Manor anymore. I don’t belong anywhere, really. Potter wants me to stay in his room, with him, but I’m not sure I can do that either. Not yet.  
  
Maybe, after tonight. If we both make it through.  
  
I’m wearing Muggles clothes. Potter gave them to me. He said it was my birthday gift to him. Wearing clothes he bought me. None of that reads as logical to me, in fact it makes me think Potter’s slightly mental, but I’ve nothing else to give him. Not until after dark.  
  
The trousers are tighter than I’d expect. Dark blue, fitted, and rough. They do fit well, I suppose, though I’m not sure sitting is a viable option. The shirt is fine cotton, buttoned, and grey. I leave it open from my collar and roll up the sleeves. I don’t think I’ll survive the night otherwise. It feels hot as a dragon’s nest in here.  
  
I’m to go down to dinner. To the full Weasley brood. Everyone. And probably some of Potter’s friends too. But my feet won’t take me. I smelled each person as they arrived. The lot of them. Even from up here. There should be some kind of insult in that, but my heart isn’t in it. At least I recognised Granger and her husband by scent. Parchment and books, dust and sugar, and explosive magic. The latter is mostly her husband. Working at the joke shop, I suppose.  
  
My hand is on the door handle, but I can’t make myself turn it. Something within me makes me say, “Lottie.”  
  
A moment later, the familiar pop and the smell of charcoal. She looks up at me with wide eyes. A sad look.  
  
“Master Draco,” she says. “Lottie is so—”  
  
“I wanted to thank you,” I say, before she can finish. She looks terrified and on the verge of tears, but mostly, once I speak, she looks at me in wonder. “For bringing me here. Or for helping Potter kidnap me. Whatever. I’m grateful.”  
  
Her large eyes watering, she looks as though she wants to hug me. I bite the inside of my cheek.  
  
“Lottie would never let Master Draco—” She stops, and we both know why. I nod to her. “Lottie will always be here for Master Draco. Always when he needs her. And when he doesn’t.”  
  
I close my eyes, breathing steadily, and nod again. “Thank you, Lottie. Thank you. I—should go now. I didn’t need anything. Just that.”  
  
Lottie nods and disappears, and I’m left with no alternative. I open the door to the first of two trials tonight.  
  


***

  
  
The portal doorway is dark, closed, and full of shadows. The clock on the wall ticks away, the night ever approaching. The phial in my hand holds clear liquid scintillating with magic. As though filled with chromatic glitter, it sparkles in the minimal light. Potter takes my other hand, squeezes tight.  
  
“Are you ready?” he asks, and I want to run. Or push him away and go through the door alone. He laughs. “It’ll work, Draco. And this is nothing compared to what you just went through. I’ve never seen anyone win over Mrs Weasley that quickly, actually. I think you’ve just broke a record. I hope you like jumpers.”  
  
I laugh despite myself. A mother like that is always on the lookout for more children. A lonely puppy is the perfect addition to her household, I suppose. It’s not a criticism. It was what I needed. One of the things. A pang in my stomach makes me think of my mother, of the last I saw her, of her letter. Part of me thinks she’d be grateful to Mrs Weasley for not running away. Part of me thinks otherwise.  
  
“Let’s do it,” I say, because  _I’m ready_  is just not true. Potter nods, flicks his wand, and the phial changes. Pointed on the end, it becomes a syringe. He hovers it by my arm and waits for me. I nod, and Potter pricks my arm.  
  
The serum floods my veins quickly, and I feel cold. At first. Ice and snow rush through me, filling me, crystallising, turning me to stone. Then, after a second, the ice shatters and my veins are on fire. I barely have time to scream, to cry out in pain, when the fire dissipates and turns to a rush of joy and anger and fear and laughter and love. I’m washed at once in all sorts of emotions, my mind racing, my heart thudding against my sternum. I can barely breathe, and I feel as though I’ve never been more alive.  
  
My body shudders, shakes, my fingers trembling. Everything is changing, shifting, everything is different. Even the world colours before my eyes—to green and blue and purple and pink and back again. I see clearly and through a fog.  
  
And then it’s over. As if it didn’t happen at all. I stand in the doorway to my doom, changed or maybe not.  
  
“Did it work?” Potter asks, and I shrug.  
  
“We’re about to find out,” I say, and I want to stop him following me. I open the door but hesitate. “You don’t have—”  
  
“I’m not going anywhere, Draco,” Potter says, and without another word, he pushes me through the door and follows after.  
  
There’s a panting sound, shallow and short, and I realize it’s me. I’m breathing hard and fast, and I know there are only seconds left.  
  
“You should—” I say, and Potter agrees. He shifts before my eyes, leaving nothing behind but the wolf in his place. He sits and waits, watching me.  
  
Inhale, exhale, and I can smell the moon. Bright and cold and rushing with blood. It thuds in my mind, swells within me, and I know it’s starting. I steel myself for the pain, for the agony of breaking bones and tearing muscle. I tense, eyes shut, and wait. But it doesn’t come.  
  
As though I’m floating beneath a waterfall, through a mist, I feel the change pass over me. The world adjusts, my body slips from one form into another, and soon I open my eyes. Nothing is the same.  
  
Everything is alive and full of scents, full of twinkling wonder. I snuffle quietly, unused to breathing through a snout, and pad about. The pieces of the shattered mirror reflect a wolf—white as snow and glorious and calm.  
  
I take a deep breath and look out the window. I look at the moon. The shining god playing chess with my life, it sits in the ocean of black, unmoving. I look back—unafraid.  
  
A soft howl draws my attention, and I turn. I look into Harry’s green wolf eyes.  
  
I remember.

 

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